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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Gamblin, 



Or, Fortuna, her Temple and 
Shrine. The True Philosophy 
and Ethics of Gambling. By 
James Harold Romain. 



$ 



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Sojcsw ( 



CHICAGO: 



The Craig Press. 
1891 



5 4- 






COPYRIGHT, 1891. 



JAMES HAROLD ROMAIN. 



publtsber's IRote to tbe public* 



America is free and her people boast of her freedom in 
every realm of thought and every department of activity. 
Her pride is a form of discussion from which no man is ex- 
cluded because of the opinions he may advocate. We declare 
a man should be heard in the very face of prejudice or passion. 

Mr. Romain's book, in our judgment, is entitled to publi- 
cation for other reasons than those above mentioned. It is 
replete with learning, and original in conception. The phil- 
osophy is broad and the tone dignified. Patient research is 
manifest in every page. Every branch of knowledge has been 
made to contribute its force to the argument. The work is a 
mine of information in political speculation, social science and 
moral philosophy. Mr. Romain is obviously in sympathy with 
the widest possible circle of culture. For that reason, if for 
no other, what he has to say is entitled to a respectful con- 
sideration. His book is unique in design and wrought out 
with vigor. His appeal is to philosophy, science and history ; 
not to idle curiosity, purposeless gossip, or the unimportant 
"personal equation" to which others have been so prone. 

In the interest of fair play, but, confessedly, with no sym- 
pathy for gambling, the book is offered to the people to decide 
as to the correctness of its conclusions. 

Adam Craig, Publisher. 



(3) 



Gbfs book is Dedicated 
vTo tbe 

1bon, 3obn Cameron Simony 

bE tbe autbor, 

as a token ot esteem for bis 

fair^mfnDeDness anD sense ot justice. 

Bltbougb tbat gentleman is not a gamester, 

nor in sgmpatbg witb tbe pursuit, 

set tbe autbor Desires tbus to acknowledge bis 

indebtedness to bim tor mang valuable suggestions 

in tbe preparation of tbis work. 




PREFACE. 



TWO doughty knights, clad cap-a-pie in 
burnished mail, once journeyed forth 
in search of martial adventure. Their 
noble steeds all caparisoned for war, both 
wandered up and down through the world, 
defending the fair and protecting the weak. 
Betimes they chance to meet where stood in 
majestic beauty a bronze statue of victory. 
In her right hand the goddess clasped a 
sword, while in graceful pose her left rested 
upon an aegis richly wrought in the precious 
metals. Approaching from opposite direc- 
tions, to one warrior the shield appeared as 
of gold, while to the other it was of silver. 



8 PREFACE. 

Low were bowed their crested helms in 
courtly salutations. 

" Comely, Sir Knight," said one, " comely 
and noble is this figure." 

" Yea, thou hast spoken truly," was the 
reply. 

" Precious, very precious," rejoined the 
first, "must be yon golden targe." 

" Nay, Sir Knight, it is of silver, I trow." 

"By my lady, thou liest," quickly came 
the hot retort. 

Then, prancing chargers well in hand, 
with lances lowered to deadly level, they 
prepared for the "wager of battle." Both 
were unhorsed in the onslaught. Regaining 
an upright posture, with swords drawn to 
renew the duel, each observed that his reverse 
of the shield was what the other had con- 
tended for. Moral: It is wise to look first 
upon both sides of the subject. 

Not so, it is evident, has it been with 
books heretofore devoted to a discussion of 
gambling. Their authors professed an ex- 



PREFACE. Q 

position of gaming in the interest of mor- 
ality. Well may some of the books be 
read for their wealth of information and 
excellent diction. Some have been earnest, 
in places eloquent, and often suggestive. 
Vivid and dramatic are the descriptions of 
a passion that has possessed the world in 
all ages ; yet, that the various assaults were 
conceived in wisdom, or that they have resulted 
in permanent good, I am constrained to deny. 

True, I believe with Sir Walter Raleigh, 
that out of history may be gathered a policy 
no less wise than eternal; "by the comparison 
and application of other men's forepassed 
miseries with our own like errors and ill— 
deservings." 

But why did it not occur to these writers 
that circumstances should not be recorded 
merely because they have happened ; that 
events deserve memorial only because they 
illustrate some great principle ; because 
some inference is to be drawn from them, 
which may increase the happiness or enlarge 



10 PREFACE. 

the powers of man? That it did not, we 
must infer from the pages they have 
given to the world. Cicero declared that 
" History is the light of truth." In vain, 
however, do we look for a consideration of 
causes in any history of gambling. " Histories," 
said Carlyle, " are as perfect as the historian 
is wise." Is that book wise wherein no ade- 
quate remedy is suggested for the evil it de- 
picts? Although interesting, such a work is 
but a chronicle devoid of moral purpose. It 
is clear, to dwell upon the follies of man will 
not cure them; that it will not strengthen 
humanity merely to portray their weaknesses. 
The passion our author would combat is 
rooted in the soul. 

"Whose powers at once combat ye, and control, 
Whose magic bondage each lost slave enjoys." 

How would you extirpate the evil, if such 
it is? Expose a folly, you may say, and 
wisdom will turn from it. You would have 
us believe, perhaps, that: 

1 ' Wisdom from heaven received her birth ; 
Her beams transmitted to the subject Earth." 



PREFACE. II 

And yet 

" This great empress of the human soul 
Does only with imagined power control, 
If restless passion, by rebellious sway, 
Compels the weak usurper to obey." 

So far as the history of gambling has ig- 
nored causes and neglected remedies, it is in- 
complete. That it is deficient in both is my 
reason for this book. Some one should 
begin the subject where other authors have 
deserted it. 

I have long made a study of gaming in 
all its aspects and relations ; aiming, the 
while, at breadth, impartiality and thorough- 
ness. At first my reading was not conducted 
with a view to authorship. I desired infor- 
mation for its own sake. As a gamester, 
I sought the philosophy of gaming. 

What is chance? How far does it influ- 
ence all mankind and circumscribe their 
efforts? What is gambling, in the broadest 
sense of the term? Is gaming wrong per se: 
i.e., absolutely vicious ? Where in human 



12 PREFACE. 

nature is the passion grounded? Why does 
the propensity exist? Is it an inevitable ten- 
dency of human nature? What is morality? 
Wherein does the gambler differ from other 
men? How should his occupation be dis- 
tinguished from business generally? How 
far may the conduct of an individual be 
dictated by society? How may the essentially 
punitive be distinguished from that which 
is not so? What are the true limits of State 
power in relation to appetites and propensi- 
ties? Are sumptuary laws effectual? Does 
history, as the philosophy of example, justify 
such enactments? Can the law eradicate 
innate tendencies? Can character be trans- 
formed by statute? Is it possible to legislate 
morality into mankind? What should be 
the policy of statesmen and reformers in 
the realm of morals? If it is not possible 
to extirpate the passions by law, how may 
they be regulated, directed, educated and 
purified? 

Such were the problems that confronted 



PREFACE. 1 3 

my understanding. Each and all were re- 
solved to the best of my knowledge and 
capacity. I make my observations public in 
the interests of fair play and common sense. 
I am at least entitled to the literary chances 
of a reading age. 

I have dallied with fickle fortune for 
years. As gamester, I anticipated prejudices 
against the pursuit. My deductions are 
amply fortified, therefore, from the mature 
studies of great and wise men. I did not 
expect my book to stand unsupported. It 
is substantiated, throughout, by the teachings 
of profound and impartial philosophers. 



Contents, 



(15) 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Publisher's Note, ------ 3 

Dedication, - - • - - - - 5 

Preface, ... ... 7 

Introduction, ---..- 19 

The Worship of Fortuna, - - - 27 

What is Truth; or, The Philosopher's Stone? - 46 

The Destinies; or, The Reign of Law, - - 103 

Legislative Exorcism; or, The Belief in Word 

Magic, -----. 139 

"The King is Dead — Long Live the King!" - - 211 



(17) 



Untrobuction, 



(19) 



INTRODUCTION. 

A TRAVELER once sought to explore 
an unknown country. Compass he 
had not, and both chart and guide were 
wanting. In the distance a mountain loomed 
above the plain. To its summit our traveler 
made his way. From thence he beheld the 
region stretching away in all directions. The 
land he would traverse the eye could now 
sweep from center to circumference. It was 
not possible to know the landscape in detail, 
but the relative proportions, distances and 
boundaries were unfolded at his feet. So, 
when properly conceived, with the introduc- 
tion to a book. A perspective of the topic is 
conducive to a better understanding of its 
scope and purpose. My object is to sustain 
the following propositions : 

(21) 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

First. — Men have gambled in all ages of 
the world. That they will continue to do so 
is a reasonable presumption. To gamble 
would seem instinctive — inherent in the souls 
of mankind and fostered by the very nature of 
their environment. History reveals that all 
alike are possessed by this subtle passion — 
male and female, young and old, good and 
bad, wise and unwise, rich and poor, the ex- 
alted and the lowly. In every century may be 
seen a motley throng kneeling in devotion at 
the feet of Fortuna. Eagerly about her shrine 
press the mighty concourse of emperors, 
kings, chieftains, statesmen, ecclesiastics, sav- 
ants, philosophers, poets, soldiers and the 
wayfaring. Now and ever will mankind court 
the mysterious and uncertain. 

Second. — To define a wager is to defy intol- 
erance of opinion. Truth is not absolute but 
relative. It is not to be established ex cathe- 
dra. Moralists are not in a position to de- 
nounce gambling per se. They are not yet 
agreed upon the unconditioned principles of 



INTRODUCTION. 2$ 

right and wrong. Before it can speak with 
authority, moral philosophy must find an ulti- 
mate, self-evident and irrefragable foundation. 
That it is essentially criminal or necessarily 
vicious to invoke a chance has never been 
demonstrated. To live is to gamble. We all 
wager in one way or another. Luck is ap- 
pealed to in every department of human activ- 
ity. Everywhere uncertainty is the rule and 
certainty the exception. In the business world 
vast realms are specifically founded upon the 
doctrine of chances. If absolutely wrong, 
then gambling should be discountenanced in 
all persons under every circumstance. In 
whatever guise it should be condemned as a 
principle. Until this has been done society is 
not in a position to punish in one person what 
it permits or commends in another. In its 
treatment of gambling the law is now incon- 
sistent, unjust and hypocritical. 

Third. — Man is the creature of circum- 
stances. Society is an organism conditioned 
by its environments. Every nation must com- 



24 INTRODUCTION. 

plete a cycle of infancy, youth, manhood and 
old age. Briefly, history is a science — an un- 
broken chain of causes and effects throughout 
the ages. Volition, so-called, is delusive and 
shadowy — more apparent than real. At best, 
we but yield to the greatest pressure of tem- 
perament or motive. Human nature, in a 
word, is the result of inevitable tendencies. 
The passions are inherent and cannot be vio- 
lently uprooted. Character is innate and not 
subject to arbitrary reform by extrinsic force. 
Here, as elsewhere, evolution is the law of ex- 
istence. While our appetites and propensities 
may be educated, they can never be obliter- 
ated. Social and political philosophy have 
repeatedly deduced these truths from the 
history of man. In the field of reform 
officialism has been repudiated by the 
greatest thinkers. Legislation, therefore, 
should conform to the light of experience 
and the dictates of science. Ergo: in the 
future, as in the past and present, the 
gaming passion will everywhere assert it- 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

self, despite repressive legislation, however 
severe. 

Fourth. — Sumptuary statutes are futile and 
impertinent. They are to-day and ever have 
been indefensible and impolitic. Such laws 
are an infringement upon individual rights 
and an insult to human nature. Officious and 
Pharisaical legislation in the province of 
morals and taste should be abandoned once 
and forever. Per se y to gamble is neither a 
sin nor a crime. For the law to punish the 
practice is futile and unwarranted. 

Conclusion. — An enlightened age demands 
the overthrow of an effete administrative pol- 
icy. In the realm of morals, let that be wisely 
guided which the law cannot prevent. Gam- 
bling, with certain conditions, should be li- 
censed and placed under the surveillance of 
a police. 



Zhc TKHorsbip of Jfortuna. 



m 




CHAPTER I. 
Ube TKHorsbtp of ffortuna* 

READER, in imagination go backward 
with me more than 20 centuries. Enter 
with me the magnificent and imposing 
Temple of Fortuna, in old Praeneste. We 
are within the portico of that stately hemi- 
cycle. Far above is the marble dome, and 
about us fcluster the snowy columns. As it is 
early morn, flamens and virgins are assembled 
inside the sacred precincts. They are grouped 
about the flaming tripod, and the robes of 
purple and white blend in harmony of color. 
The sanctuary is redolent with burning in- 
cense. A golden image of the goddess, in 
heroic mould, flashes back the rays of sunlight 
that penetrate the inner shadows. A solemn 

(29) 



30 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 

chant entrances the ear, and our eyes turn to 
the westward. Before us expands the Cam- 
pagna, ninety miles in length and twenty-seven 
in breadth. The undulating plain stretches 
away in all directions until it sinks into the 
sea; thickly studded is the superb picture with 
prosperous cities and " every rood of ground 
maintains its man." Everywhere is presented 
an appearance of comfort and rich cultivation. 
Yonder, Mount Albanus towers to a height of 
3,000 feet above the sea. Looming majesti- 
cally above its topmost peak is the Temple of 
Jupiter Latiaris. The grandeur of mighty 
Rome is at our feet, a splendid and stupend- 
ous panorama of temples, amphitheatres, 
basilicas, palaces, circuses, baths, arches and 
aqueducts. Such was the spot dedicated to 
Fortuna by the ancient Praenestians. She 
was more deeply enshrined in their hearts 
than Olympian Jove himself. 

Praeneste flourished before the birth of 
Christ or the glory of Rome. The noble 
city occupied a projecting point or spur of 



THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 3 1 

the Apennines and was distant from Rome, 
due east, about twenty-three miles. Above 
its walls towered the Temple of Fortuna. 
The Temple proper was circular in form 
and crowned the summit of a hill more than 
2,400 feet above the Mediterranean level. 
Standing out boldly against the sky, its 
majestic outlines were visible from a great 
part of Latium. As extended by Sulla, the 
sanctuary occupied a series of six vast ter- 
races, which, resting on gigantic substruc- 
tions of masonry, and connected with each 
other by grand staircases, rose one above 
the other on the hill, in the form of a 
pyramid. Closely associated with the ritual 
of the Temple were the " Praenestine Lots," 
or Sortes Praenestinae, and in existence at 
the beginning of the Christian era. Con- 
stantine, and subsequently Theodosius, sup- 
pressed the oracle. Its celebrity is attested 
by Lucan, Horace and Ovid. Cicero speaks 
of the great antiquity and magnificence of 
this shrine. Numerous were the great men 



32 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 

who petitioned the Praenestine Fortuna for 
assistance. Of the number may be mentioned 
Tiberius, Domitian and Alexander Severus. 
Even Sulla sought to propitiate the goddess 
before engaging in his successful wars with 
Mithridates. 

Plutarch tells us of Timotheus, the Athe- 
nian, son of Conon, who, " when his adversaries 
ascribed his successes to his good luck, and 
had a painting made representing him asleep, 
and Fortune by his side, casting her nets 
over the cities, was rough and violent in 
his indignation at those who did it, as if, 
by attributing all to Fortune, they had robbed 
him of his just honors ; and said to the 
people, on one occasion, at his return from 
war: 'In this, ye men of Athens, Fortune 
had no part!' A piece of petulance which 
the deity played back upon Timotheus; who, 
from that time, was never able to achieve 
anything that was great." 

"Sylla," he continues, "on the contrary, 
not only accepted the credit of such divine 



THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. $$ 

favors with pleasure, but gave the honor of 
all to Fortune. He once remarked: 'that 
of all his well-advised actions, none proved 
so lucky in the execution, as what he had 
boldly enterprised, not by calculation, but 
upon the moment/ He gave Fortune a 
higher place than merit, and made himself 
1 entirely the creature of a superior power.' " 
The Goddess of Chance, or Good Luck, 
actually existed in the imagination of the 
ancients. Chapman writes: 

" The old Scythians 
Painted blind Fortune's powerful hands with wings, 
To show, her gifts come swiftly and suddenly, 
Which, if her favorites be not swift to take, 
He loses them forever." 

Temples to Fortuna (the Greek Tyche) 
dotted the sunlit landscape from Thebes to 
Rome. She was adored by the Etrurians as 
Nortia. Originating near Mount Parnassus, 
her worship gradually extended into all parts 
of Greece and Italy. Antium, an opulent and 
powerful city of Latium, was once celebrated 
for its splendid temple of Fortune. 



34 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 

History discloses not a period, however 
remote, when Fortuna was not a favorite with 
the Latins. Numa Pompilius daily prostrated 
himself before her altar, and the ceremonial 
received a new impetus from his pious grand- 
son, Ancus Martius. Servius Tullius ascribed 
his power and success to the gods. Especi- 
ally did he assume the protection of Fortuna. 
Two temples were erected to her by this 
great king, one in the Forum Boarium and 
the other on the Tiber. By some it is said 
that the edifices were respectively dedicated 
to Bona Fortuna and Fors Fortuna. Yet 
another gorgeous structure afterward graced 
the Ouirinal. 

Precisely when the mythological system 
lost its influence is not known. It is not 
true, however, as was once generally believed, 
that immediately after the birth of Jesus 
the oracles were forever hushed. While, long 
prior to that event, many fanes had been 
deserted, yet others continued to flourish for 
at least two centuries thereafter. Before 



THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 35 

the Christian era, Mythology had been re- 
pudiated by Philosophy and Science. To 
the learned it was at best but expressive of the 
principles back of natural phenomena. Only 
because it was largely identified with the 
state, did it receive the support of politicians. 
Yielding to the spirit of Christianity, the 
Olympian deities departed with the decline 
of Rome as a pagan power. 

Of all the shining throng that beautified 
the Pantheon, Fortuna alone refused to abdi- 
cate a sovereignty she would exercise to the 
end of time. True, the exquisite forms in 
which she 'had charmed the eye were des- 
troyed and her temples razed with the earth; 
yet has Fortuna continued her uninterrupted 
sway over the hearts of men. Sanctuaries 
and statutes were not necessary to her su- 
premacy in the world. She was enshrined 
in the soul — her worship instinctive in the 
very nature of humanity. Where is the 
epoch of Christendom in which an innumer- 
able multitude have not worshiped this 



36 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 

imperial goddess ? Among her devotees 
may be included men famous in every depart- 
ment of life : politics, statesmanship, war, 
eloquence, philosophy, science, art, literature 
and the liberal professions, A review of 
the brilliant procession is profoundly sug- 
gestive. 

Great Cyrus, who founded the Persian 
monarchy; Darius, who originated central- 
ized imperialism and reduced it to a system; 
Artaxerxes Third, the greatest administrator 
of remote antiquity; Miltiades, a name asso- 
ciated with the glories of Marathon, once 
designated " freedom's best and bravest 
friend ;" Themistocles, to whom may be 
fairly ascribed the victory at Salamis; Simon- 
ides, gentle and patient, the poet of na- 
tionality and patriotism; Aristophanes, the 
great father, and Menander, the acknow- 
ledged master of Greek comedy; Pericles, 
the " Olympian Zeus of oratory," a great 
statesman and one of the most remarkable 
characters of Greece; Plato, whose name 



THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. ^1 

is synonymous with all that is most exalted in 
idealism; Xenophon, a friend and pupil of 
Socrates, and to whom the world is indebted 
for "Memorabilia," "Anabasis," and " Cyro- 
.psedia;" Demosthenes, known to oratory as 
the " greatest Hellenic star;" Isocrates, his 
contemporary, the distinguished rhetorician; 
Philip of Macedon, the famous father of a 
more famous son; great Alexander, " Child of 
Zeus," " Son of Peleus," familiar to every 
schoolboy as the greatest of military con- 
querors. 

In the resplendent story of Rome are 
Scipio Africanus, a military genius, and the 
conqueror of Hannibal; Cornelius Sulla, the 
great general, sagacious politician, accom- 
plished scholar, " one of the most remark- 
able figures of all time;" Julius Caesar, equally 
preeminent in statecraft, war and letters; 
Marc Antony, brave and generous; Lepidus, 
not the least of the second great triumvirate; 
Augustus, than whom a more consummate 
ruler and prudent statesman never lived; 



38 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 

Tiberius, a writer of Greek odes and an 
orator at nine years of age ; in battle he 
repeatedly worsted the Parthians, Cantabri- 
ans, Dalmatians, Pannonians and Illyrians; 
Domitian, conspicuous for his piety, who 
enforced the laws against adultery and other 
gross forms of immorality; Titus, bewailed 
at his death as " the love and light of the 
human race;" Hadrian, just, liberal, valorous 
and energetic ; Nerva, humane and progres- 
sive ; Trajan, indomitable and heroic ; Alex- 
ander Severus, a virtuous 'prince, a student 
of Christianity, and the friend of Paulus and 
Ulpian; Sallust, distinguished in Latin liter- 
ature for power and animation ; Livy, the 
man of beautiful genius ; the graceful Ca- 
tullus; exquisite Horace and facile Ovid. 

Among the Germanic peoples, Eugene of 
Savoy, a memory cherished by Austria, who 
lived but for glory, and raised the Hapsburg 
arms to a prestige unequaled before or since; 
Wallenstein, bold, imperious and of versatile 
ability in civil and military affairs. 



THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 3Q 

In Italy, the Abbes Ruccellai and Fran- 
gipanni, pious and charitable ; Reni Guido, 
who painted the marvellous " Crucifixion of 
St. Peter's," and the " Aurora." In art, he 
expressed a most refined and fervent spirit- 
ualism. 

The Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Charles 
of France, distinguished, respectively, as 
"The Wise," " The Beloved," and " The 
Victorious;" Charles VIII., who, with but 
9,000 soldiers, defeated an Italian army of 
40,000 men; Louis XL, ever admirable for 
his administrative talent, a friend of the 
middle classes, he restrained a turbulent and 
oppressive nobility; Louis XII., of France, 
a " father of the people;" Louis XIII., dis- 
tinguished for valor and martial ability; Louis 
XIV., better known to the world as " The 
Great," and to his country as Dieu-donne — 
"God-given;" the amiable and picturesque 
Henry of Navarre, the champion of Prot- 
estantism and protector of the Huguenots; 
Philibert de Chalon, fertile and resolute; 



40 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 

Bertrand du Guesclin, "king of the tourna- 
ment," the "hero of heroes;" Conde and 
Turenne, both profound and alert; Marshall 
Saxe, energetic and courageous ; Napoleon 
Bonaparte, a titanic genius of transcendent 
powers, king of kings, " the astonishment and 
terror of the world;" Ney, bravest of the 
brave, the victor of Elchingen, Mannheim 
and Moskva; Murat, "the Gold Eagle," a 
truly wise king, and the greatest cavalry 
leader of his time; Richelieu, greatest states- 
man of the 17th century; Mazarin, brilliant 
in ministerial policy, and the wise architect 
of peace at Westphalia; Mirabeau, a man 
of gigantic thoughts and deeds — the mental 
Colossus of his age — "an intellectual Her- 
cules;" Talleyrand, unexcelled in diplomacy 
and eminent as a financier; Thiers, equally 
able in politics and literature; M. Sallo, 
counselor to the Parliament of Paris, and 
Mathieu Mole, at one time the Premier- Presi- 
dent of that body; Moliere, the inimitable; 
Corneille, creator of French tragedy; Rotrou, 



THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 41 

his master ; and Racine ; Montaigne, the 
essayist, extraordinary for his learning and 
sound reason ; Paschasius Justus, an erudite 
and excellent physician ; Rousseau, apostle 
of universal happiness, and unrivaled in the 
literature of France for the subtle eloquence 
of his style; Voltaire, world-famous Sage of 
Ferney, the "sovereign writer of his century;" 
Rene Descarte, deservedly exalted in phil- 
osophy and mathematics; the delightful poets, 
Voiture and Coquillart, with the renowned 
Cardinals D'Este and De Medicis. 

Fair Albion comes into the story with 
"Lion-Hearted" Richard, the incomparable 
knight-errant; Edward I., unequaled in his 
century as warrior and ruler; Edward III., 
who befriended literature and art, and es- 
poused the cause of progress; his son, the 
Black Prince, "most glorious star of chivalry ;" 
Henry VIII., a foe to papacy, and for a time 
the most popular monarch in English history; 
"Ye Merrie King Charles;" Duke of Marl- 
borough, the brilliant and successful general; 



42 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 

Arthur Wellesley, "The Iron Duke," vener- 
ated and beloved ; Horatio Nelson, of mag- 
nificent exploits and stupendous victories, 
who said: "Where anything great is to be 
done, there Providence is sure to direct my 
steps;" unrivaled was he in daring resource 
and skill; Sir Charles Napier, conqueror of 
Sindeand the "acknowledged hero of a family 
of heroes;" Dan Chaucer, "that first sweet 
warbler" of English verse, philosopher, poli- 
tician and poet; Marlowe, the mightiest of 
Shakespeare's pioneers ; Shakespeare, him- 
self, "sweet swan of Avon," myriad-minded 
and wondrous; "rare" Ben Jonson; Raleigh, 
a universal genius — "the glass of fashion 
and mould of form ; " Surrey, polished 
and chivalric ; John Dryden, of whom 
Dr. Johnson said: "As Augustus was to 
Rome, so was Dryden to English litera- 
ture. He found it brick and left it marble;" 
Dr. Tobias Smollett, who wrote " Humphrey 
Clinker;" Fielding, the frank and manly 
author of "Tom Jones;" sweet Oliver Gold- 



THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 43 

smith, in letters perspicuous; vivacious, and 
graceful; Halifax, 

' ' Jothani of piercing wit and pregnant truth, 
Endued by nature and by learning taught 
To move assemblies ; " 

the first Marquis of Anglesey, high-spirited 
and impetuous, a dashing general of cavalry; 
that best of Irish Viceroys, Frederic Howard, 
Earl of Carlisle ; Lord Bolingbroke, accom- 
plished and eloquent; Shaftesbury, the incor- 
ruptible statesman, upright judge and friend 
of religious freedom ; Horace Walpole, of 
whom Macaulay said, that his writings " were 
among the delicacies of intellectual epicures;" 
Dr. Dodd, divine, author, editor and chaplain 
of the king; George Selwin, the celebrated 
conversational wit ; Sir Philip Francis, im- 
mortal as "Junius," and a "friend of the 
people;" the artistic Farquhar; courtly 
Waller; elegant Dorset; charming Sedley; 
and scholarly Congreve; jolly Dick Steele, a 
master of classical prose; Charles James Fox, 
of whom James Mackintosh said : " He is 



44 THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 

the most Demosthenian speaker since Demos- 
thenes;" Sheridan, " capable of the grandest 
triumphs in oratory/' and noted for his spark- 
ling wit and exquisite songs; Wilberforce, 
who dedicated his life to a struggle for the 
abolition of the slave-trade; Edward Gibbon, 
the historian, splendid, imposing and lumin- 
ous; Ponsonby, once speaker of the Irish 
House of Commons; Dr. Colton, author of 
" Lacon," William Pitt, of dauntless spirit and 
unimpeachable integrity; and Lord Byron, a 
poet famed for his passionate eloquence and 
pathetic gloom. 

Fortuna may proudly enumerate her great 
votaries in America : Aaron Burr, Edgar 
Allan Poe, William Wirt, Luther Martin, 
Gouverneur Morris, Daniel Webster, Henry 
Clay, General Hayne, Sam Houston, Andrew 
Jackson, Generals Burnett, Sickles, Kearney, 
Steedman, Hooker, Hurlbut, Sheridan, Kil- 
patrick, Ulysses S. Grant, George D. Prentiss, 
Sargeant S. Prentiss, Albert Pike, A. P. Hill, 
Beauregard, Early; Ben Hill, Robert Toombs, 



THE WORSHIP OF FORTUNA. 45 

George H. Pendleton, Thaddeus Stevens, 
Green of Missouri, Herbert and Fitch of Cali- 
fornia, "Jerry" McKibben, James A. Bayard 
— father of the recent Secretary of State — 
Benjamin F. Wade, the lamented Broderick, 
John C. Fremont, Judge Magowan, Charles 
Spencer, Fernando Wood and his brother 
Benjamin, Colonel McClure, Senator Wolcott, 
Senator Pettigrew, Senator Farwell, Matthew 
Carpenter, Thomas Scott, Cornelius Vander- 
bilt, Hutchinson of Chicago, and Pierre Lorril- 
lard. Names might be extended indefinitely. 
Enough have been mentioned to illustrate how 
the gambling habit permeates all ranks of 
society in the United States. 

With the conclusion of our retrospect, 
we may well exclaim: What is the nature of 
a passion so inveterate and general : of a 
propensity that dominates all mankind alike, 
whether noble or mean, wise or foolish, strong 
or weak? "Is there a remedy?" propounds 
the philosopher. The legislator asks, " What 
is my duty?" 



What is TErutb? 

or, 

Zhe philosopher's Stone. 




CHAPTER II. 
Mbat is Urutb; or, tbe pbilosopber's Qtoncl 

IN mediaeval romance the Alchemist is a 
familiar figure — with flowing robe and 
skull-cap, in 'the midst of crucibles and 
alembics. This period of the world did not 
present a feature more weird and picturesque: 
a body of learned but misguided men, profes- 
sing the " chemistry of chemistries. " With 
eagerness and devotion they vainly sought for 
a principle that could indefinitely prolong hu- 
man life and transmute the baser metals into 
gold and silver. Although centuries have 
elapsed since Gebir and Paracelsus, yet the 
"philosophers stone" is a desideratum. Of 
the Alchemists it has been quaintly said by 
Percy, fi that their respective histories were 

(49) 



50 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

accurate illustrations of the definition which 
describes Alchemy as an Art without prin- 
ciple, which begins in falsehood, proceeds in 
labor, and ends in beggary." 

Forcibly suggestive is this picture of moral 
philosophy and philosophers. From the re- 
motest ages certain men have arrogated 
to themselves a knowledge in the realm of 
ethics much superior to their brethren. It 
was manifested by the "gnomic" poetry of 
Greece, more than 700 years' B. C, and in 
the oracular sayings of the so-called "seven 
sages" of antiquity. To this day a similar 
class of wiseacres may be found in all parts 
of the earth. The moralists, however, search 
not for the universal medicine or an irresist- 
ible solvent. Such persons admit the "grand 
elixir" is a delusion; and yet, their ambition 
is more daring and presumptious. They 
would " be as gods, knowing good and evil." 
" Gold is but dross," they exclaim, "our quest 
is for necessary moral truth. We seek im- 
mutable righteousness." Long ago was Al- 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 5 1 

chemy abandoned as futile. Not so the 
egotistic dogmatism of the moral philoso- 
phers: with them self-conceit has remained 
incorrigible, from Socrates and Plato, through 
Kant and Hegel, to Martineau and Janet. 
In vain, their assumptions have been repeat- 
edly demolished and their deductions refuted. 
Unmindful are they, also, of the irreconcilable 
conflict of " schools" — the hopeless contradic- 
tion of "systems." Fully one hundred great 
thinkers, first and last, have asserted the 
discovery of indubitable "good." But no 
two of them all agreed upon the infallible 
line of distinction between what " ought to 
be" and its opposite. In fact, every indi- 
vidual of the number represents a different 
scheme. All moral philosophers asseverate 
the necessity for an authoritative standard 
of right and wrong — for some peremptory 
and incontestable guide to human conduct. 
Otherwise, they admit, one opinion is no 
more acceptable or commanding than an- 
other. 



52 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

Some affirm the existence of an innate 
faculty, the unerring dictates of which are 
defended. But Bentham (a great jurist) 
denounced the " moral sense " man as a 
bully who would brow-beat others into ac- 
cepting his verdict. All such appeals were 
described by him as sheer " ipse dixitism: 
as a fraud by which incompetent philosophers 
would palm their own tastes and fancies upon 
mankind." " One man," wrote Bentham of 
Shaftesbury, " says he has a thing made on 
purpose to tell him what is right and what 
is wrong; and that it is called moral sense: 
then he goes to work at his ease and says 
such and such a thing is right, and such and 
such a thing is wrong. Why? ' Because my 
moral sense tells me it is." Of the inner- 
capacity-philosopher, Hazlitt remarked that 
" his excessive egotism filled all objects with 
himself," To Crabbe, "he was a self-conceited 
man, who pretends to see through intuition 
what others learn by experience and obser- 
vation; to know in a day what another wants 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 53 

years to acquire ; to learn of himself what 
others are contented to get by means of 
instruction." 

Archdeacon Paley, again, ridiculed as 
worthless a " moral sense " which man may 
disregard if he chooses. What is an author- 
ity, said Paley, merely felt in the individual 
consciousness: a personal whim, the mere 
accident of individuality. What, he asks, is 
the authority of another's conscience to me? 
What, indeed, is my conscience, and why is 
it an authority to myself ? We can never 
know whether it is " a real angel with flaming 
sword, or a scare-crow dressed up by the 
moral philosophers." Did the "moral sense" 
exist, should we not see a universal evidence 
of its influence? Would not men exhibit a 
more manifest obedience to its supposed 
dictates than they do? Would there not be 
a greater uniformity of opinion, as to the 
Tightness or wrongness of opinions, as to the 
rightness or wrongness of actions ? " We 
should, not, as now, find one man or nation 



54 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

considering as a virtue what another regards 
as a vice — Malays glorying in the piracy ab- 
horred by civilized races — a Thug regarding 
as a religious act that assassination at which 
a European shudders — a Russian piquing 
himself on his successful trickery — a red In- 
dian in his undying revenge — things which 
with us would hardly be boasted of. 

" Again, if this moral sense exist and 
possess no fixity, gives no uniform response, 
says one thing in Europe and another in 
Asia — originates different notions of duty in 
each age, each race, each individual, how 
can it afford a safe foundation for a system- 
atic morality? What can be more absurd 
than to seek a definite rule of right in the 
answers of so uncertain an authority ?" 

Can it be fairly said, my reader, that such 
men are in a position to judge the gambler, 
or to denounce his vocation? May not the 
gamester ask of this sect: By what authority 
do you pronounce judgment, " out of hand," 
upon me and mine? Where is your standard 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 55 

— authentic, determinative, undeniable, irre- 
futable? Am I subject to the dominion of 
your conscience? In my opinion, gaming is 
not a sin. In what is your judgment superior 
to mine? Moreover, I defy you to demon- 
strate a wager is wrong, per se. It you find this 
impossible, I am free to repudiate your dog- 
matism. To know, also, that gaming is 
not prima facie sinful, we have but to define 

it. 

The lexicographers define a gamester as 

"one who plays for money or other stake ;" 
and gaming " to be the use of cards, dice, 
or other implement, with a view to win 
money, or other thing, wagered upon the 
issue of the contest." Is this a description 
of anything forbidden by the decalogue? 
Where, in the old or new testament, is a 
similar transaction denounced as a sin? But, 
it may be said, perhaps, the foregoing defin- 
ition does not suffice for moral consider- 
ation: it ignores the element of chance, 
which enters more or less into all games. 



56 WHAT IS TRUTH?* 

This would imply that it is immoial to invoke 
a fortuity. Is it? 

Here, the great Jefferson may be quoted 
with propriety: " It is a common idea that 
games of chance are immoral. But what 
is chance? Nothing happens in this world 
without a cause. If we know the cause, we 
do not call it chance, but if we do not know 
it, we say it was produced by chance. If 
we see a loaded die turn its lightest side 
up, we know the cause, and that it is not an 
effect produced by chance; but whatever side 
an unloaded die turns up, not knowing the 
cause, we say it is the effect of chance. Yet, 
the morality of the thing cannot depend on 
our knowledge or ignorance of its cause. 
Not knowing why a particular side of an 
unloaded die turns up, cannot make the act 
of throwing, or of betting on it, immoral. 
If we consider games of chance immoral, 
then every pursuit of human industry is im- 
moral, for there is not a single one that is 
not subject to chance; not one, wherein you 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 57 

do not risk a loss for the chance of some 
gain." 

In " Paradise Lost/' Milton declares: 

1 ' Next him, high arbiter, 
Chance governs all! " 

And of mankind we read in Ecclesiastes that 
"time and chance happeneth to them" — 
mankind. (9: 1 1) . Among the Hebrews, pro- 
perty was divided and disputes were decided, 
" by lot." The custom is mentioned by Solo- 
mon, Matthew and Luke. (Prov. 16:33; Matt, 
27:35; Luke 10.) Furthermore, this mode 
of appeal to destiny is sanctioned, yea, even 
prescribed, by the Bible. According to 
Leviticus, Aaron was commanded " to take 
the two goats, and presgnt them before the 
Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of the 
congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon 
the two goats; one lot for the Lord and the 
other lot for the scape-goat. And Aaron 
shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's 
lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But 
the goat on which the lot fell to be the 



58 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

scape-goat, shall be presented alive before 
the Lord, to make an atonement with him 
and to let him go for a scape-goat into the 
wilderness." (16:7, 8, 9.) 

Thus was chance invested with the sanctity 
of a religious observance. 

Moses was instructed that the " Promised 
Land " should be divided among the Hebrews 
"by lot." The method is described in Num- 
bers: "Notwithstanding, the land shall be 
divided by lot, according to the names of 
the tribes of their fathers shall they inherit. 
According to lot shall the possession thereof 
be divided between many and few." This 
direction was followed to the letter by " Ele- 
azar, the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, 
and the heads of the fathers of the tribes 
of the children of Israel;" for we are told 
in Joshua, that " By lot was their inheritance; 
as the Lord commanded by the hand of 
Moses, for the nine tribes and for the half 
tribe. (Josh 14:1, 2; 18:6.) 

Ltccky then, decided the tenure oj the 



•WHAT IS TRUTH? 5Q 

tribes in Canaan — a title dictated by Div- 
inity. 

Joshua determined, by lot, that it was 
Achan, of the tribe of Judah, who had taken 
"the accursed thing" and thus brought upon 
Israel the disaster at Ai. (Josh. 7:14.) 
During the great battle of Michmash- 
Aijalon, Saul said unto the Israelites: 
" Cursed be the man that eateth any food 
until evening, that I may be avenged on my 
enemies." 

Unmindful of this oath, wild honey was 
eaten by his son, in a moment of extreme 
hunger. No one would divulge that the 
king's adjuration had been disregarded by 
the beloved Jonathan. " Therefore, Saul 
said unto the Lord God of Israel, give a 
perfect lot. And Saul and Jonathan were 
taken: but the people escaped. And Saul 
said, Cast lots between me and Jonathan, 
my son. And Jonathan was taken." (1 Sam. 
14:40,42.) 

By lot, likewise, the question of " ministry 



60 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

and apostles kip" was decided against Justus 
and in favor of Matthias. (Acts i : 26.) 

Briefly, if the Bible is a divine production, 
how can appeals to chance be stigmatized 
as vicious or irreligious? Also, it is not to 
be denied that chance, or casualty, enters 
very largely into every department of human 
action. Men are compelled to take ventures 
every day; the engineer faces them; so does 
the sea captain; the same may be said of 
the doctor, the surgeon, the lawyer and the 
banker. A merchant encounters all the 
risks of trade; the hostility of the elements 
and the bankruptcy of others. The rains 
may rot or the drouths destroy the crops 
of the farmer. And almost, in the words of 
Ben Jonson, throughout the world, 

' 'All human business, fortune doth command, 
Without all order, and with her blind hand, 
She, blind, bestows blind gifts, that still have nurst, 
They see not who nor how." 

The politician, too, might say with Macbeth: 
" If chance will have me king, why, chance 
may crown me," War is a mighty game 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 6 1 

between giants. In truth, of Napoleon the 
poet has said: 

' ' Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones, 
"Whose table, earth; whose dice, were human bones." 

Beyond this, even our laws and institu- 
tions appeal to chance. In the United States 
Senate, whom, respectively, of two mem- 
bers — elected at the same time — shall serve 
for the long and short term, is decided by 
lot. The law recognizes that even property 
may be thus divided. " When an estate is 
apportioned into three parts, and one part 
is given to each of three persons; the proper 
way is to ascertain each one's part by draw- 
ing lots." Thus is the rule stated by Bouvier 
and Wolff. The Illinois Statutes, for the 
regulation of elections, enact that " when 
two or more persons receive an equal and 
the highest number of votes for an office 
to be filled by the county alone, that county 
clerk shall issue a notice to such persons 
of such tie vote, and require them to appear 
at his office, on a day named in the notice, 



62 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

within ten days from the day of election, 
and determine by lot which of them is to 
be declared elected. On the day appointed 
the clerk and other canvassers shall attend, 
and the parties interested shall appear and 
determine by lot which of them is to be de- 
declared elected/' Similar laws exist in 
other states. 

Some moralists admit the validity of a 
transaction, notwithstanding it may depend 
upon chance. They will concede there is 
no intrinsic wrong in any species of game, 
unless there exists an inequality of chance 
or skill. Not so, thought Paley, the Christian 
philosopher, whose name is a household 
word for purity, zeal and power. He said: 
" What some say of this kind of contract, that 
one side ought not to have any advantage 
over the other, is neither practical nor true. 
This would require perfect equality of skill 
and judgment, which is seldom to be met 
with. I might not have it in my power to 
play with fairness a game of cards once in 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 63 

a twelvemonth, if I must wait till I meet 
with a person whose art, skill and judgment 
are neither greater nor less than my own. 
Nor is this equality requisite to the justice 
of the contract. One man may give to 
another the whole of the stake if he chooses, 
and the other may justly accept it if it be 
given him; much more, therefore, may one 
give another an advantage in the chance 
of winning the whole. The only proper 
restriction is, that neither side have an ad- 
vantage by means of which the other is not 
aware. The same distinction holds of all 
transactions and proceedings into which 
chance enters; such as insurance, and specu- 
lations in trade or in stocks." 

In this connection, with what force could 
be quoted the sweet Nazarene in His parable 
of the vineyard laborers: " Friend, I do 
thee no wrong; didst thou not agree with 
me for a penny ? Take that thine is, and 
go thy way; I will give unto this last 
even as unto thee. Is it not lawjul for me 



64 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

to do what I will with mine own? (Matt. 
20:13, 14, 15) 

Here the mathematicians attempt to res- 
cue moral philosophy. They would dem- 
onstrate the improbability of luck. If asked 
how it happened that a man won a hundred 
thousand dollar prize, while his neighbor drew 
a blank, the mathematician might tell you it 
was chance; that there was a necessity for the 
prize to fall somewhere, and that he who had 
the most chances was the most likely to obtain 
it. Such caviling could be dismissed with the 
answer : You acknowledge the necessity of a 
prize falling somewhere, then why not to me. 
Surely my chances are as good as my neigh- 
bors', perhaps more so. It may be ; and what 
maybe maybe now. " There is no prerog- 
ative in human hours/' " There is a tide in 
the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, 
leads on to fortune." 

No intelligent gambler is a believer in 
"luck" as a personal quality. He recognizes 
the phenomena of chance. How they will 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 65 

operate is not known to the mathematician 
more than to him ; the " chances " may result 
favorably or unfavorably for a gambler ; the 
law may so work as to benefit him, or it may 
not. Whether "chance" or " luck," is imma- 
terial to the issue. 

But seriously, for what do these aspirants 
contend? A method of reasoning from the 
happening of an event to the probabilities of 
one or another cause; that the possible combi- 
nations in a pack of cards, or a handful of 
dice, may be computed, even when the ques- 
tion involves the chances of a thousand dice, 
or a thousand throws of one die. In its very 
nature this is a vain-glorious pretension, and 
upon what is it based ? An hypothesis pre- 
senting the necessity of one or another out of 
a certain number of consequences. In other 
words, given an event as having happened, 
and which might have been the consequence 
of either of several causes, or explicable by 
either of several hypotheses, the probabilities 
can be inferred. 



66 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

In this way is the philosophy of suppos- 
ition substituted for that of caprice. We 
are asked by the mathematician, at the very 
outset, to assume something he has not 
proved, and which is not susceptible of proof. 
We are required to take for granted the 
imaginary premises upon which his argu- 
ment depends. Is this not the acme of in- 
tellectual audacity? But having yielded his 
antecedent proposition, what is the result? 
A bare probability — a mere likelihood of the 
occurrence of any event. 

So much for the boasted " Doctrine of 
Chances." Besides, I assert that every pre- 
mise of the mathematician has been refuted 
by my experience as a gamester. In the 
proper place, I could disprove his every 
theory with a fact For example: De 
Morgan and Proctor tell us that it is not 
probable seven could be thrown ten succes- 
sive times, with a pair of dice. We are told, 
on good authority, that in 1813, a Mr. Ogden 
wagered 1,000 guineas that his opponent 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 6j 

would not perform this feat. That gentle- 
man threw seven nine times running. 

However, the mathematicians are not con- 
cerned with the right or wrong of play for 
money. They seek to demonstrate the in- 
equalities of chance, hoping thus to dissuade 
humanity from its pursuit. Their efforts are 
idle. " The proverb which advises us to 
throw a sprat to catch a whale, shows that 
mankind consider a chance of a gain to be 
a benefit for which it is worth while to give 
up a proportionate certainty." These gentle- 
men have extended their conjectures to the 
risks of loss or gain in general commerce; 
the probable continuity of life and duration 
of marriage; the contingencies in political 
results and the verdicts of juries; the distri- 
butions of sex in births, and even the proba- 
bility of error in any opinion that may be 
generally received. In fact, should their 
guesses be heeded by the world, enterprise 
and hope would depart. 

Another class of moralizers reject and 



68 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

deride the idea of " innate notions." Truth, 
they maintain, is not to be found in worn 
out abstractions and moral senses, which are 
the weak reproductions of material organisms. 
In ethics, if they are to be followed, we must 
set out with the convictions that our materials 
are relative and not absolute, and that our 
highest moral conceptions must partake of 
the same character. As stated by Posnett, 
systems of ethics, more or less perfect in 
their day, have vanished in the progress of 
society and mind. Systems of ethics, whether 
we see or care to see it, are gliding from 
amongst us at this moment, while others, 
" with strange faces are growing familiar 
oy the slowness of their approach." 

To illustrate from Chenebix : Nothing 
can appear more definite than virtue ; yet, in 
Asia, the term may denote submission; in 
Europe and America, resistance; to Mussul- 
mans war; to Christians, peace. Honor, too, 
which its votaries describe as one and in- 
corruptible, assumes various significations. 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 69 

In some countries it prescribes revenge for 
an injury received; in others, forgiveness. 
Here, the violation of female chastity is a 
disgrace, elsewhere it is a duty. To a 
Mussulman the eating of pork is " vile and 
unclean: fills his soul with aversion, repug- 
nance, disgust. To this habit their antipathy 
is deep and intuitive. To the natives of 
Western India, eating beef is sacrilegious 
and revolting. In Spain, any other worship 
than that established by the Catholic church 
is impious and in the highest degree offen- 
sive to God. The people of all Southern 
Evurope regard a married clergy as irreligious, 
indecent, unchaste, gross and disgusting. 
Wherever the Puritans have been sufficiently 
powerful they have endeavored to put down 
all public, and nearly all private amusements: 
music, dancing, the theatre and public games." 
This denomination, strange as it may 
seem, also urge upon mankind what, in their 
opinion, is the " true moral rule" — the correct 
standard of right. It is that which is estab- 



70 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

lished by authority, custom, or general con- 
sent. A variable and doubtful criterion, 
this, one would naturally suppose. How 
severely has it been treated by Spencer and 
Carpenter. Right and wrong are not essenti- 
ally different. All moral distinctions are a 
matter of arbitrary establishment by the 
" powers that be." That which is statutory, 
customary, fashionable, or generally habitual, 
is fit and proper. Conduct is purely a ques- 
tion of majority and might. Place gambling 
in the ascendant to-morrow and it would be 
just; or, as the major part of humanity, 
gamesters would be respectable; for an 
opinion commonly accepted is the correct 
opinion. With this as a guide, can the state 
hold the gamester reprobate? 

Society keeps changing its sentiments 
with the centuries. Absolutely, we can never 
know when it is right or when it is wrong. 
The outlaw of one era is the idol of another. 
Servetus was immolated by the Calvinists, 
to-day he is a martyr to conscience. Bruno 



WHAT IS TRUTH? J I 

was burned as a heretic, now he is the hero 
of philosophy and science. 

Galileo and Roger Bacon were once exe- 
crated by the church — their bones lie in 
unknown and unhonored graves. We regard 
them as brave pioneers of human thought. 
The formerly despised and hunted Christians 
are become the greatest power on earth. 
The Jew money-lender of the " dark ages" 
(whom such as Front-de-Bceuf once tortured 
with impunity) is the Rothschild of our 
century — " the guest of princes and the in- 
stigator of commercial wars." Shylock is 
now an influential and courted capitalist. 
" All the glories of Alexander do not condone, 
in our eyes, for his cruelty in crucifying the 
brave defenders of Tyre, by thousands, along 
the sea-shore; and if Solomon, with his 
thousand wives and concubines, were to ap- 
pear in London or New York to-morrow, 
even the most frivolous circles would be 
shocked, and Brigham Young, by contrast, 
seem a domestic model." 



72 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

From Caesar we learn that the Suevi held 
their lands in common; that private property 
in the soil did not obtain with the Gauls 
and Germans. The same is true of the 
North American Indians and some of the 
Pacific Islanders. It is conceded, moreover, 
that communistic principles were generally 
prevalent in the earliest ages of the world. 
Then, any attempt at exclusive individual 
possession of land or chattel would have been 
deemed a theft. 

The mediaeval ideal was an ascetic and 
monastic life. To-day, millions regard such 
a course as unwise, if not wicked. Poverty, 
heretofore esteemed as the badge of honor 
and dignity, is by our era adjudged offensive. 
Nomadism prevailed in a former age. Now 
gypsies and tramps are the outcasts of society. 
Regarding marriage, public opinion has varied 
through all phases, without attaining finality. 
In earliest times how indiscriminate is the 
tie — the monstrous relation of brother and 
sister being the rule, rather than the excep- 



WHAT IS TRUTH ? 73 

tion. Polygamy prevails with one people 
and polyandry among another. In India 
and the Orient a wife is hidden from the 
dearest friend, while in Africa a chief will 
put his mate to bed with a guest. In Japan 
young women, even of good birth, " are free 
in their intercourse with men, till they are 
married; at Paris they are free after." 

In ancient Greece and Rome, again, mar- 
riage was not the highest conception, and 
largely " a matter of convenience and house- 
keeping." Wives were little, if any better, 
than slaves. The class of women known as 
Hetairai (concubines and mistresses) were 
openly honored and trusted by both political 
and social leaders. The name of Aspasia 
is closely associated with that of Pericles. 
Theodota was the intimate of Socrates. 
Diotima has been immortalized in the 
"Symposium" of Plato. 

The splendid ideal of our century is the 
monogamic state — "the great theme of 
romantic literature, and the climax of a 



74 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

myriad novels and poems." In classic Greece 
the idealistic model was male friendship — 
comradeship. We have its type in the heroic 
figures of Harmodius and Aristogiton. The 
Theban Legion, or " Sacred Band," exempli- 
fied the principle. No man might enter 
without his lover. Although annihilated at 
the battle of Chseronaea, it was never van- 
quished. The literature of Greece and 
Rome illuminate this exalted sentiment. 
The writings of Pliny the younger, Cicero 
and Lucian, are worthy of especial mention. 
Many sweet and noble friendships are em- 
balmed in the poetry of Hellas and Latium; 
Demetrius and Antiphilus ; Damon and 
Pythias; Phocion and Nicoles; Glaucus and 
Diomedes; Philades and Orestes; Cicero and 
Atticus; Socrates and Alcibiades; Lucilius 
and Brutus; Tiberius Gracchus and Blossius; 
Caius Gracchus and Licinus. 

Suicide was not thought unworthy by the 
ancients. It was resorted to by Anthony, 
Brutus, Cassius, Cato, and Zeno. To-day, 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 75 

the attempt is a crime, and its consummation 
a disgrace. In Europe and America it is 
felo-de-se. Infanticide is common in many 
parts of Asia and Africa. To-day the feudal 
baron would be adjudged a freebooter; the 
knight-errant a brawling vagabond. A nine- 
teenth century man may beat his wife within 
an inch of her life, and get but three months. 
For stealing a suit of clothes he would 
be " sent up" for years. So "gambling 
on 'change is now respectable enough, but 
pitch and toss for halfpence is low, and must 
be dealt with by the police. We know that 
when questions connected with life contin- 
gencies were first considered, it was regarded 
as most deliberate gambling to be in any 
way concerned in buying or selling such 
articles as annuities, or any interests depend- 
ing upon them." The age boasts of an 
advance in the humanities; and yet, public 
opinion permits extravagance and selfishness 
in the rich while the poor are starving. Our 
educated classes, generally, approve the vivi- 



j6 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

section of animals. In ancient Egypt it would 
have been stigmatized as the most abomin- 
able of crimes. 

From age to age, likewise, law represents 
the code of the dominant or ruling class — at 
all times only valid because it is the code 
of those in power. How often used by 
"authority" for selfish purposes, may be read 
on every page of history. Monarchy, absolute 
or limited, is a synonym for injustice. Feudal- 
ism is another term for murder, rapine and 
extortion. In Spain, the lands of nobles 
were long exempted from direct taxation. 
For centuries the Hungarian turnpikes were 
free to the aristocracy. Prior to the revol- 
ution in France, all burdens of state devolved 
upon the lower classes. Less than two 
centuries ago Scotch lairds exported their 
peasantry into slavery. Students will recall 
the "Black Act" of George I., and the 
" Inclosure Laws" of England. Until quite 
recently, slavery existed in Europe and 
America; nor has the institution wholly dis- 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 77 

appeared from the earth. Legislation is 
mainly in the interest of the wealthy and 
powerful. Congress and legislatures are 
making the rich richer, and the poor poorer. 
Government is largely devoted to the creation 
and upholding of corporations, trusts, mon- 
opolies, subsidies and extortionate tariffs. 
What care the politicians for manhood ? 
Wealth is their God. 

" Let your rule be the greatest happiness 
to the greatest number," interposes another 
authority. But are men agreed in their 
definition of " greatest happiness?" Dif- 
ferent notions of it are entertained in all 
ages, amongst every people, by each class. 
"To the wandering gypsy a home is tiresome, 
whilst a Swiss is miserable without one. Pro- 
gress is necessary to the Anglo-Saxons ; on 
the other hand, the Esquimaux are content 
in their squalid poverty, have no latent 
wants, and are still what they were in the 
days of Tacitus. An Irishman delights in 
a row, a Chinaman in ceremonies and pagean- 



78 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

try, and the usually apathetic Javanese gets 
vociferously enthusiastic over a cock-fight. 
The heaven of the Hebrew is a city of gold 
and precious stones, with an abundance of 
corn and wine; that of the Turk, a harem 
peopled by Houris; that of the American 
Indian, a happy hunting-ground; in the Norse 
paradise there were to be daily battles, with 
magical healing of wounds. It was, seem- 
ingly, the opinion of Lycurgus, that perfect 
physical development w r as the chief essential 
to human felicity; Plotinus, on the contrary, 
was so purely ideal in his aspirations as to 
be ashamed of his body. To a miserly 
Elwes, the hoarding of money was the only 
enjoyment of life; but the philanthropic Day 
could find no pleasurable employment, save 
in its distribution." 

Francis, Duke of La Rochefoucault, 
likened the soul of man unto a medal, so 
constructed that it may represent either a 
saint or a devil. Montaigne, also, said the 
soul of man was double-faced; the inner 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 79 

beamed upon self-love, while the outer wore 
a mask. Voltaire was a scoffer: a master 
of satire, who ridiculed without mercy every 
human weakness. In "Zadig" and " Micro- 
megas" he mocked the ignorance and self- 
conceit of mankind. His " Memnon," the 
u Wise Memnon," who, in the morning, fore- 
swore all women, made a vow of temperance, 
renounced gaming and quarreling, and deter- 
mined never to be seen at court, was, before 
the night of the same day, cheated and 
robbed by a female, got drunk, gamed, 
quarreled with his most intimate friend, and 
made a visit to court, where everyone laughed 
at him. The moral of "Candide, or the 
Optimist," is, as interpreted by Smollett, 
that nothing is more absurd than the exercise 
of human reason; that nothing is more futile 
and frivolous than . the cultivation of phil- 
osophy ; that mankind are savages, who 
devour one another. This is cynicism, pure 
and simple. I cannot endure a creed so 
ghastly: a philosophy that suspects Socrates 



SO WHAT IS TRUTH? 

of incontinence, charges Epicurus with prodi- 
gality, accuses Aristotle of covetousness, and 
can say of Seneca that " he had but the single 
virtue of concealing his vices." Horace took 
a more charitable view of the moral philoso- 
phers, and ascribed their weakness to inability 
rather than hypocrisy. The poet says that 
men " upon the stage of this world are like 
a company of travelers whom night has sur- 
prised as they are passing through a forest; 
they walk on, relying upon the guide, who 
immediately misleads them through ignor- 
ance. All of them use what care they can 
to find the beaten path again ; everyone 
takes a different path, and is in good hopes 
his is the best; the more they fill themselves 
with these vain imaginations the farther 
they wander; but though they wander a dif- 
ferent way, yet it proceeds from one and 
the same cause; 'tis the guide that misled 
them, and the obscurity of the night hinders 
them from recovering the right road." 

In truth, the mind of man, unaided by 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 8 1 

Divine light, is not able to determine what 
is absolutely right or absolutely wrong. In 
the realm of morals, man is to be guided 
only by the decrees of God, if known. For 
those who recognize the Bible as His word, 
the way is clear. Aside from this, the path 
is dark and uncertain. But nowhere in 
either the Old or New Testament, is gambling 
forbidden. Not a word did Moses or Jesus 
utter against it, as a general principle, or 
in any of its particular forms. What is com- 
manded by God is our only test of right 
and wrong. Theology is of man, and yet 
it is a fact that gambling, in itself, is not 
inconsistent with the profession of any creed 
in Christendom. The ablest theologian can- 
not successfully challenge this proposition. 

For the sake of argument, heretofore, I 
have granted the moral freedom of man. 
The fact is, I deny his " liberty," save in the 
most restricted sense. I am convinced every 
action is determined by the resultant force 
of conflicting motives. However, the possible 



82 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

autonomy of man is not necessary to a con 
sideration of what it is right or best to do. 
It is only when we ask about the conduct of 
man, in his relation to the law, that it is 
important to know whether he could have 
done otherwise. I reserve the topic for a 
subsequent chapter. 

Be this as it may, certain conclusions are 
obvious to the impartial observer. It is 
very difficult, if not impossible, to draw a 
strict boundary between the virtues and vices. 
Courage should not be carried to the point 
of rashness. Timidity is the abuse of pru- 
dence. Generosity can degenerate into im- 
providence. Reverence might merge into 
credulity and superstition. Arrogance is the 
extreme of self-respect. Chastity is over- 
done by the monastic. Some writers, in fact, 
deny a fixed line between the virtuous and 
vicious passions; this class boldly maintain 
a place for both vices and virtues. Hatred 
may be just and anger magnificent. Although 
out of place in a drawing-room, obstinacy is 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 83 

a virtue on the field of battle; Love is divine 
and lust monstrous. Are they not yoke- 
fellows? Reformers, so called, are impossible 
without stupid candor and impassive blunt- 
ness. Timidity, on the other hand, is the 
defect of a sensitive temperament. Sensu- 
ality underlies the domain of art, painting, 
sculpture and music. % 

This is suggested by Plato in the "Phae- 
drus" — an allegory of the soul, wherein the 
spirit of man is depicted as a chariot to which 
are attached a white and black horse. The 
first typifies our higher and the latter our 
lower passions. 

Mr. Lecky writes in his " History of 
Morals," that in society certain defects 
necessarily accompany certain excellencies 
of character. He remarks, " Had the Irish 
peasants been less chaste they would have 
been more prosperous." " Habitual liars and 
habitual cheats have been industrious, amiable 
and prudent." ''Civilization is not favorable 
to self-sacrifice, reverence, enthusiasm or 



84 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

chastity." He declares of the gambling 
table, " that it fosters a moral nerve and 
calmness scarcely exhibited in equal perfec- 
tion in any other sphere — a fact which Bret 
Harte has finely illustrated in his character 
of Mr. John Oakhurst, in the ' Outcasts of 
Poker Flat.' " 

This thought is* boldly illustrated by 
Mandeville, in his " Fable of the Bees:" 

" These were called knaves, but, bar the name, 
The grave industrious were the same: 
All trades and places knew some cheat, 
No calling was without deceit. 

The root of evil, avarice, 

That damn'd, ill-natured, baneful vice, 

Was slave to prodigality, 

That noble sin; whilst luxury 

Employed a million of the poor, 

And odious pride a million more : 

Envy, itself, and vanity 

Were ministers of industry, 

Their darling folly, fickleness, 

In diet, furniture and dress, 

That strange, ridiculous vice, was made 

The very wheel that turned the trade." 

The author of this unique production 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 85 

announced that his main design was to in- 
dicate the impossibility of enjoying all the 
most elegant comforts of life "that are to 
be met with in an industrious, wealthy and 
powerful nation, and at the same time be 
blessed with all the virtue and innocence 
that can be wished for in a golden age; 
from thence to expose the folly and unreason- 
ableness of those that, desirous of being an 
opulent and flourishing people, are wonder- 
fully greedy after all the benefits they can 
receive as such, are yet always murmuring 
against those vices and inconveniences, that 
from the beginning of the world to the present 
day, have been inseparable from all the 
kingdoms and states that ever were formed 
for strength, riches and politeness." 

14 To do this, I first slightly touch upon 
some of the faults and corruptions the several 
professions and callings are generally charged 
with. After that I show that those very 
vices of every particular person, by skillful 
management, were made subservient to the 



86 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

grandeur and worldly happiness of the whole. 
Lastly, by setting forth what of necessity 
must be the consequence of general honesty, 
virtue, innocence, content and temperance, 
I demonstrate that if mankind could be cured 
of the failings they are naturally guilty of, 
they would cease to be capable of being 
raised into such vast, potent, and polite 
societies, as they have been under the several 
commonwealths and monarchies that have 
flourished since creation. ,, 

Not yet, then, have we found the human 
standard by which the gambler is to be 
denounced. 

Gamblers are accused of avarice, and an 
inordinate desire for wealth. As a rule, 
the gamester is not penurious. A miserly 
or covetous grasp of money is inconsistent 
with his vocation. Concede the accusation, 
and is he alone? Is he more greedy of 
gain than other men? History refutes the 
charge. Money is the god of the world. 
Get enormous wealth is the cry, no matter 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 87 

how; no matter how many impoverished 
widows and squalid orphans are crying out 
to heaven, day and night, against you; and 
such slavish adulation as the world knows 
not beside are yours. The passion for 
wealth increases gradually, as its end is 
achieved, the world over. Its effects are 
manifest wherever men strive for gold. 

"Gold! gold! gold! gold! 
Bright and yellow, hard and cold, 
Molten, graven, hammered, rolled; 
Heavy to get, and light to hold ; 
Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold ; 
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled; 
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old 
To the very verge of the church-yard mould, 
Price of many a crime untold ; 
Gold! gold! gold! gold!" — Thomas Hood. 

The morale of gambling is not to be 
determined by political economy, which is 
not a part of moral philosophy. It is 
not founded on the imperations of duty, 
but upon the adequate footing of desirable- 
ness of self-interest. In the language of 
Prof. Perry: " One word circumscribes the 



88 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

field of morals, ought. One word defines 
the field of economy, expediency." So far 
as it is a science, political economy is cold 
and selfish; "builded on monopoly values. ,, 
Judged by such a standard, gambling would 
be right, if expedient. 

Yes, but is not gambling a destructive 
luxury? Is it not a wasteful expenditure 
of money? I answer, what is luxury, and 
is it always an evil? Roscher well says: 
" The idea conveyed by the word is an 
essentially relative one." Every individual 
calls all expenditure with which he chooses 
to dispense, a luxury. The same is true of 
every age and nation. " 'Tis a word with- 
out any specific idea," wrote Voltaire, "much 
such another expression as when we say 
Eastern and Western hemispheres: in fact, 
there is no such thing as East and West; 
there is no fixed point where the earth 
rises and sets; or, if you will, every point 
on it is, at the same time, East and West. 
It is the same with regard to luxury; for 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 89 

either there is no such thing, or else it is 
in all places alike. . . . Do we under- 
stand by luxury the expense of an opulent 
person? Must he, then, live like the poor, 
he whose profusion, alone, is sufficient to 
maintain the poor? Expensiveness should 
be the thermometer of a private person's 
fortune, as general luxury is the infallible 
mark of a powerful and flourishing empire. 
. . . Money is made for circulation. He 
who hoards it is a bad citizen, and even 
a bad economist. It is by dissipating it 
we render ourselves useful to our country 
and ourselves." David Hume also thought 
the word of uncertain signification. He 
said: "The bound between virtue and vice 
cannot here be exactly fixed, more than 
in other moral subjects. To imagine that 
the gratification of any sense, or the 
indulging of any delicacy, is of itself a 
vice, can never enter into a head that is 
not disordered by the frenzies of enthusi- 
asm. These indulgences are only vices, 



90 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

when they are pursued at the expense of 
some virtue, as liberality of charity; in 
like manner as they are follies, when a 
man ruins his fortune and reduces himself 
to want and beggary." Again, William 
Roscher, the political economist, was of 
opinion that " prodigality is less odious 
than avarice; less irreconcilable with certain 
virtues;" and that " prodigality, directly or 
indirectly, increases the demand for com- 
modities." We know the Epicureans and 
Stoics were reproached with being bad 
citizens, because their moderation was a 
hindrance to trade. Gambling is no more 
a luxury than many other practices of man- 
kind. Some persons may prefer it as a 
pastime to any other form of luxury. Who 
is to decide a question of taste and ex- 
pense but the individual concerned? One 
man indulges lavishly in pictures, books, 
and clothes ; another is prodigal in the 
matter of tobacco and liquors; a third de- 
lights in the excitement of chance. All 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 9 1 

these inclinations are luxurious. Which is 
preferable to each, is not for society to de- 
termine in one case, more than in the 
others. In a word, the phases of luxury 
are so variable and extensive that it is 
equally unjust and impracticable for the 
state to discriminate unfavorably. 

The gambler is said to be idle and non- 
productive: that a quid pro quo is not given 
for what he receives. What is meant here 
by idleness and non-production? Does it 
signify that labor is the proper basis of ex- 
changeable value: the only just source of 
what is called wealth? If so, the condem- 
nation includes all who obtain wealth with- 
out working for it. Suppose it be admitted 
that service is the one equitable title to pro- 
perty. What, then, of assumed rights, in 
the form of profits, dividends, rent and 
interest? If true wealth is the outcome of 
physical labor, are not banker, broker, middle- 
man, landlord, capitalist, gentleman of leis- 
ure and gambler on the same footing. 



Q2 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

Bishop Jewel once said: "If I lend ^ioo, 
and for it covenant to receive ^105, or any 
other sum greater than was the sum I did 
lend, this is that we call usury: such a kind 
of bargaining as no good man, or godly 
man, ever used." Many contend that in- 
terest contributes nothing to the support of 
society, but is a tax on labor. Those who 
receive it are said to be extortioners who 
live on the gains of other people. Christ, 
Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mahomet all put 
usury in the category of forbidden sins. 

It is discountenanced by Ezekiel, Moses, 
David, Aristotle, Cato, St. Basil, Masse, 
Bacon, Buxton, Dr. Wilson and Fenton. 
Ricardo, the great economist, was of the 
opinion that rent is not a creation of wealth, 
and adds nothing to the necessaries, con- 
veniences and enjoyments of society. Adam 
Smith, the father of political economy, con- 
sidered rent as a monopoly price paid for 
the use of land. Were this true, the owner 
of a house, when it had paid for itself, could 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 93 

rightfully charge for its use, the cost of his 
labor in transferring it to you, and the 
amount of wear and tear. 

It is said of the gambler that he is not 
a man of equivalents. But, if wealth is to 
be a question of exact equality in values 
and labor, then must business generally be 
condemned. The great legists, Pomponius 
and Paulus, unblushingly said, that " In buy- 
ing and selling, a man has a natural right 
to purchase for a small price what is really 
more valuable, and to sell at a high price 
what is less valuable, and for each to over- 
reach the other/' Harsh as this may seem, 
it but voiced the principles of trade in 
every age of the world. " Trade is war," 
said the ancient proverb; " and as a nail 
between the stone joints, so does sin stick 
fast between buying and selling. ,, Business 
is advantage-taking erected into a system. 
Get as much more than you give as is pos- 
sible. A thing is worth what it will bring. 
You may rightfully take from another what 



94 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

he is compelled to yield. Exchange is not 
a rendering of equivalent for equivalent; 
but an effort to get the largest possible 
amount of another's property, or services, 
for the least possible return. In business, 
justice and mercy are daily displaced by ex- 
tortion and mastership : " the producing 
classes are vassal to the speculating classes; 
the creators of wealth to its stealthy pos- 
sessors." 

The Christian Fathers deprecated trade. 
"To seek to enrich one's self is in itself 
unjust," said Clement; " since it aims at ap- 
propriating an unfair share of what was in- 
tended for the common use of men." "If 
covetousness is removed," argued Tertullian, 
" there is no reason for gain, and, if there 
is no reason for gain, there is no need of 
trade." Jerome taught that u as the trader 
did not himself add to the value of his 
wares, therefore, if he gained more for them 
than he paid, his gain must be another's 
loss." To Augustine, "business in itself is 



WHAT IS TRUTH!* Q5 

an evil, for it turns men from seeking true 
rest, which is God." Aquinas decided "that 
to buy a thing for less, or sell a thing for 
more than its value is, in itself, unallowable 
and unjust." 

It has been estimated by Bastiat, Karl 
Marx and Nordau, that laborers are un- 
justly deprived of the value of four days 
labor in each week. Terrible is the 
injustice to wage-earners, the world over, 
if the deductions of Carpenter and Godwin 
are to be accepted. " Behold the hire of 
the laborers which is of you kept back by 
fraud, crieth: and the cries of them are 
entered into the ears of the Lord of Saba- 
oth." Proudhon and Spencer have revealed 
the "economics lies" of modern society. 
" The great game of the business world is 
the game of getting on," wrote John Ruskin; 
"not of everybodies getting on, but of some- 
body getting on. What to one family is 
the game of getting on, to one thousand 
families is the game of not getting on. Nay, 



96 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

you say, they have all their chance. Yes, 
so has every one in a lottery, but there 
must always be the same number of blanks. 
Ah! but in a lottery it is not skill and in- 
telligence that take the lead, but blind 
chance. What then! do you think the old 
practice that they should take who have the 
power, and they should keep who can, is 
less iniquitous when the power has become 
the power of brains instead of fist?" 

Is this a world of equivalents in labor? 
What is the ratio of riches awarded to those 
who toil? In i860, the net average income 
was but three per cent. Yet, for that year 
the income of bare money (which needs 
no food, clothing or shelter), was all the 
way from five to thirty per cent. In Eng- 
land 30,000,000 people are taxed that interest 
may be paid to 300,000. In 1870, the interest 
on the national debts of the world amounted 
to $1,700,000,000. This rate in nine years 
would absorb a sum equal to the entire 
property of this country in 1870. We are 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 97 

informed that trade is annually taxed (in- 
terest on capital) about $200,000,000, for 
which not one dollar of actual service is 
rendered. Is interest on "watered" stock 
any better than theft? 

A world of equivalents, indeed ! In 
our cities five per cent of the population 
own more property than ninety-five per 
cent; and twenty per cent of the nation 
own more than the remaining eighty per 
cent. At the present rate of increase, 
within thirty years, 100,000 persons will own 
four-fifths of all the property in the United 
States. In twenty-five years the number 
of our people who own their homes has 
decreased from five-eighths to three-eighths. 
In New York City more than 1,100,000 
persons are dwelling in tenement houses. 
"In 1889, the farm mortgages in the western 
states amounted to three billion four hun- 
dred and twenty-two million dollars!' In 
England, to-day, there are less than 30,000 
landed proprietors — one half of the country 



98 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

is owned by 150 men. Twelve men own 
one-half of Scotland. The working classes 
of the United Kingdom own but a thirtieth 
part of the total real and personal property. 
Strictly considered, two things are said 
to be equivalent when they are " equal in 
value." Generally speaking, however, inter- 
changes are seldom, if ever, " alike in worth/' 
The equality of labor for labor does not 
occur once in millions of times. "Value" 
is an indefinite term. Into "worth" enters 
such intangible qualities as whim, caprice, 
taste, fancy, ambition, pride, habit, desire, 
appetite, passion and amusement. Exact 
and utilitarian standards would destroy belle 
lettres and the fine arts; dissipate recreation 
and the amenities of life. Are there pre- 
cise "work-a-day" equivalents for literature, 
music, sculpture, painting; for the opera, the 
theatre, the salon, the club-room? Gaming 
is an amusement for many persons. Thous- 
ands enjoy the excitements of chance. It 
stimulates their spirits above the cares and 



WHAT IS TRUTH? QQ 

drudgery of existence. Such men prefer 
a game to either book, piano or cigar. 
With them it is not a question of utility 
but ot diversion. Is the value of enter- 
tainment to be measured in muscle or 
metal? 

Wherein, essentially, does gaming differ 
from speculation or insurance? All have 
their foundation in chance. Contingencies 
and uncertainties enter into each as a con- 
sideration for investment. A gamester bets 
upon the turn of a card, or the cast of a 
die. The speculator purchases in antici- 
pation of contingent advance in the price 
of a commodity. A corporation indemni- 
fies an individual, conditionally, against pos- 
sible death or loss by fire. In neither 
instance can the result be foretold: the 
gamester may or may not win, the specu- 
lator may or may not realize a profit, the 
assured may or may not forfeit his life 
policy, or lose by fire. In every transaction, 
fortuity is the controlling element; if for 



IOO WHAT IS TRUTH? 

this reason any one is invalid or immoral, 
so are the others. Large sums have been 
won and lost at cards. Many fortunes had 
their origin in speculation: also, it has been 
productive of wide-spread disaster, distress 
and despair. Insurance companies have 
benefited thousands of widows and orphans. 
Innumerable are the families upon whom 
indigence has fallen through the forfeiture 
of policies. Forfeited premiums to the 
amount of millions are now invested in 
palatial structures throughout the civilized 
world. Analysis might show in gaming, 
speculation and insurance, that at least the 
equities and ethics are even. 

View the subject as we may, ye gamester, 
" where is thine accuser ?" To all men he 
can say : " He that is without sin among 
you, let him first cast a stone." 

Now, some one may ask: " Is not gamb- 
ling immoral to the extent it may induce a 
reliance upon chance for a livelihood, instead 
of patient industry." I might reply: "What 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 101 

is industry, as known to political economy; 
and what proportion of the world's wealth 
is a result of direct personal exertion ? " 
But, generally, men are rational creatures, 
and do not depend upon games of chance 
for a living. The credulous men are rela- 
tively few who rely entirely upon the out- 
come of chance in games as a business; 
and those few are at least on a par in 
wisdom and ethics with the millions who 
gamble in future prices of stocks, grain, 
and other commodities. "Ah! but you for- 
get,'' rejoins my critic, "that in other pur- 
suits a man produces something by his in- 
dustry, or contributes to that result in- 
directly, whereas in gambling nothing is 
produced." I consider this erroneous, in 
the face of social experience, as has been 
indicated heretofore. It may be as soundly 
said, that a " man has no right to invest 
his money in cattle, or lands, or bonds, 
unless his labor is put in with it. A man 
buys a horse and hires him to his neighbor. 



102 WHAT IS TRUTH? 

Is he entitled to the money his horse earns 
for him ? He invests in bonds at fifty 
cents on the dollar. Does he not hope 
they will appreciate in value, until they 
are worth dollar for dollar? He pays 
$1000 for a piece of land. In two or three 
years, perhaps, his neighbors have invested 
around him, and have improved their pro- 
perties, and he finds that his land will sell 
for $2000. His labor did not contribute 
to that result. He risked his capital ex- 
actly as he would have done in a game 
of chance." 



Zbe Bestinies; 

or, 

£be IReign of ILaw, 



CHAPTER III. 
Ube Destinies; or t XTbe IReign of %aw* 

ON one occasion, an aged scholar so- 
liloquized as follows : " Homer was 
at the same time beggar and poet : his 
mouth more often filled with verses than 
with bread. Plautus turned a mill that he 
might live. Menander, Cratinus and Ter- 
rence were drowned; Empedocles lost in the 
crater of Mount Etna; Euripides and Her- 
aclitus torn to pieces by dogs; Hesiod, 
Archilochus and Ibychus, murdered. Sappho 
threw herself from a precipice. Condemned 
by a tyrant, respectively, Seneca, Lucan, 
and Petronius Arbiter, cut their veins and 
bled to death. Poison terminated the lives 
of Socrates, Demosthenes and Lucretius. 

(105) 



106 THE DESTINIES. 

" In Plutarch, we read of 'two eminent 
persons, whose names were Attis, the one 
a Syrian, the other of Arcadia, both were 
slain by a wild boar; of two, whose names 
were Acteon, one was torn to pieces by his 
dog, the other by assassins; of two famous 
Scipios, one overthrew the Carthagenians 
in war, the other totally destroyed them; 
four of the most warlike commanders of 
antiquity had but one eye — Philip, Antig- 
onous, Hannibal and Sertorius/ 

" Paul Borghese, a writer of rhythmic verse, 
died of starvation. Tasso, himself the most 
amiable of poets, lived like a pauper, and 
passed away in an asylum. Bentivoglio, a 
creator of classic comedies, in the misery 
of his old age, was refused admittance to 
an hospital he had founded. Cervantes 
died of hunger, and Camoens ended his 
days in an almshouse. The body of Vau- 
gelas was disposed of to surgeons that 
his debts might be paid. Spencer was for- 
saken and neglected in his old age. Decker, 



THE DESTINIES. 10 J 

Cotten, Savage and Lloyd breathed their 
last in jails. 

" Might not these men have said, ' Who 
can shut out fate?' Were they the sport 
of circumstances, or could circumstances 
have been made their sport? Was each in- 
dependent of fatality? Was he free from 
destiny; or, was he subject to an unalter- 
able course — an invincible necessity?" 

The query of this venerable sage has 
been that of civilized man in every age. 
Coming into the world with the dawn of 
philosophy, it will remain until the veil of 
Isis is uplifted. Profoundest wisdom has 
ever taught the subordination of man to 
a higher law, by which his career is largely 
determined from the beginning. Investi- 
gation will disclose that such, to-day, is the 
real opinion of a vast majority of mankind. 

The thought was ascendant in the liter- 
ature and religion of the ancient Greeks. 
Their Moira was a personification of law; 
the Goddess of Destiny, who assigned to 



108 THE DESTINIES. 

everyone his fate, or " share." At the birth 
of man she spun the thread of his future 
life, pursued his footsteps, and directed the 
consequences of his actions, according to 
the decrees of Zeus. By some she was 
conceived as a fatal divinity, who directed 
human affairs in such a manner as to re- 
store the right proportions or equilibrium, 
wherever it had been disturbed; who meas- 
ured out happiness and unhappiness, and 
allotted losses and sufferings to him who 
was blest with too frequent gifts of Fortune, 
to the end he might be humbled into ac- 
knowledging the existence of bounds beyond 
which human happiness cannot proceed with 
safety. 

To Homer she was not an absolute 
sovereign of both heaven and earth, to whom 
even the gods must bow; but merely ap- 
portioned the fate of men, as counseled 
by Deity. In the theology of Hesiod there 
were three: Clotho, the spinning fate; Lach- 
esis, who assigned to man his fate; and 



THE DESTINIES. IOg 

Atropo, who decreed a fate that could not 
be avoided. This conception answered to 
the Teutonic Noras, or Weird Sisters. What 
was to the earlier poets of Greece a person, 
^Eschylus apprehended as a principle ; a 
law for both gods and men ; an over-ruling, 
ever-present, inevitable necessity, against 
which it is vain to contend, and from which 
it is hopeless to escape. " His characters 
are pre.-determined parricides, murderers and 
adulterers." For instance, the destiny of 
th& pious Amphiaraus led him to that death 
his wisdom foresaw; fate impelled him to the 
society his judgment forbade. Good Ete- 
ocles, too, lies under the band of fate, but 
seeks not to avert the doom. " Stern, un- 
compromising, he will meet the man he 
must slay, by whom he must himself fall." 
The inexorable destiny of ^Eschylus was 
to Sophocles and Plato an ordering of the 
divine will. 

Two great schools of philosophy divided 
the educated opinion of classic Greece and 



IIO THE DESTINIES. 

Rome. The tenets of both were fatalistic 
in tendency. What was to the Epicurean 
a " chance" appealed to the Stoic as "law." 
Man, taught Epicurus, is a mere buffet of 
a blind fatality. The phenomenon of life, 
said Stoicism, is governed with iron sway 
by an imminent necessity of reason. " Man 
should be free from passion," preached 
Zeno, " unmoved by joy or grief, and submit 
without complaint to the unavoidable power 
by which all things are governed." 

Buddhism is the doctrine taught ty Gau- 
tama, the Hindoo sage, in the sixth century, 
B.C.; now the belief of a greater part of 
central and eastern Asia and the Indian 
Islands. In this creed, fatality is a cardinal 
principle. Sir Edwin Arnold has designated 
it " The Light of Asia." The great religion 
of Brahma, also, teaches that everything is 
subject to a divinely appointed necessity. 
It boasts a philosophy that was the admir- 
ation of Bruno, Schelling, Hegel, and Draper. 
Manes declared that the moral universe was 



THE DESTINIES. Ill 

controlled by two supreme principles; one 
the author of all good, the other the author 
of all evil. The highest conception of Mo- 
hammed is an arbitrary and inexorable law. 
In the Koran we read: " No man can antici- 
pate or postpone his end. Death will over- 
take us, even in lofty towers. From the 
beginning, God hath settled the place in 
which each man shall die." The Persian 
poet sings: " The destinies ride their horses 
by night. No man can by flight escape his 
fate. Whether asleep in bed or in the storm 
of battle, the angel of death will find thee." 
" I am convinced," saith Ali, " that the affairs 
of men go by divine decree, and not by our 
administration." 

In the philosophy of Solomon, as recorded 
in Ecclesiastes, we read: "The thing that 
hath been, it is that which shall be; and 
that which is done is that which shall be 
done: and there is no new thing under the 
sun. . . . To everything there is a 
season, and a time to every purpose under 



I 1 2 THE DESTINIES. 

the heaven: a time to be born, and a time 
to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck 
up that which is planted; a time to kill, 
and a time to heal; a time to break down, 
and a time to build up; a time to mourn, 
and a time to dance; a time to cast away 
stones, and a time to gather stones together; 
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain 
from embracing; a time to get, and a time 
to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast 
away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; 
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 
a time to love, and a time to hate; a time 
of war, and a time of peace." 

With Christianity came the dogma of 
" predestination" and "election." This was 
promulgated, on the very threshold, by Paul, 
a man of the sublimest genius; adorable, 
venerable and heroic. Thus he addressed 
the church at Rome: "And we know that 
all things work together for good to them 
that love God, — to them who are the called 
according to His purpose. For whom he 



THE DESTINIES. II3 

did foreknow, he also did predestinate to 
be conformed to the image of his Son, that 
he might be first born among many brethren. 
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them 
he also called: and whom he called, them 
he also justified: and whom he justified, 
them he also glorified. What shall we say 
to these things? If God be for us, who 
can be against us?" 

This idea is necessarily involved in the 
theology of St. Augustine, who maintained 
that " grace is effectual from its nature, 
absolutely and morally, not relatively and 
gradually." It remained for John Calvin 
to erect the assertions of Paul into a cognate 
and masterly system. He insisted upon the 
purpose of God from eternity, respecting 
all events. 

Briefly, of the religion of the world, 
to-day, ninety per cent are predestinarian 
in theory or practice, consciously or un- 
consciously. Of Christendom, those who 
agree with Arminius are in a small min- 



114 THE DESTINIES. 

ority, relatively: — a minority whose creed 
involves not only the limitation of divine 
knowledge, but a paralysis of divine power 
and the moral chaos of a universe. 
That religion is necessarily puerile and un- 
philosophic which attempts to reconcile the 
omnipotence of God with the freedom of 
man. Either Nature is ordered for the 
best — so as to produce the highest good; 
or else, everything is purposeless and for 
the worst. In a word, either optimism or 
pessimism must wholly prevail: logically, a 
middle ground is impossible. We must 
choose between Leibnitz or Schopenhauer 

Literature and religion aside, the greatest 
intellects have promulgated a " philosophy 
of necessity." Everything that exists, wrote 
Oersted in substance, depends upon the past, 
prepares the future, and is related to the 
whole. " Everything throughout creation is 
governed by law : but over most of the 
tracts that come within the active experi- 
ence of mankind, the governing hand is so 



THE DESTINIES. 115 

secret and remote, that until very large 
numerical masses are brought under the 
eye at once, the controlling power is not 
detected." Jonathan Edwards said: "Noth- 
ing comes to pass without a cause. What is 
self-existent must be from eternity, and must 
be unchangeable; but as to all things that 
begin to be, they are not self-existent, and 
therefore must have some foundation for 
their existence without themselves/' Spin- 
oza urged that " In no mind is there an 
absolute or free volition; but it is deter- 
mined to choose this or that by a cause, 
which likewise has been fixed by another, 
and this again by a third, and so on for- 
ever." Emanuel Kant contended that " every 
action or phenomenon, so far as it produces 
an event, is itself an event or occurrence, 
which pre-supposes another state wherein 
the cause is to be met with; and thus every- 
thing that happens is but a continuation of 
the series, and no beginning which occurs 
of itself is possible; consequently, all the 



Il6 THE DESTINIES. 

actions of the natural causes, in the suc- 
cession, are themselves again effects." Our 
own Emerson asserted the omnipotence and 
omnipresence of law: " That the wilful and 
the fantastic, the low and the lofty, are 
encircled by a necessity." Whatever limits 
us, we call fate. If we are brute and bar- 
barous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful 
shape. If we rise to spiritual culture, the 
antagonism takes a spiritual form. . . . 
The limitations refine as the soul purifies, 
but the ring of necessity is always perched 
at the top. 

None greater than these may be found 
in the noble realm of speculative thought. 
They are unequalled Ly few, if any. The 
whole field of modern science, also, is in 
accord with their deductions : Teaching 
that nature is an inevitable sequence, and 
that all phenomena, material and mental, 
are linked together by an inevitable con- 
nection. In the words of Herbert Spencer: 
" Various classes of facts unite to prove 



THE DESTINIES. 117 

that the law of metamorphosis which holds 
among the physical forces, holds equally 
between them and the mental forces. Those 
modes of the unknowable which we call 
motion, light, heat, chemical affinity, etc., 
are alike transferable into each other, and 
into those modes of the unknowable which 
we distinguish as sensation, emotion, and 
thought; these in their turns being directly 
or indirectly re-transferable into the original 
shapes." 

^Vould you dethrone man, I am asked? 
No; I surrender to the behests of philosophy 
as fortified by the deductions of science. 
Years ago it was argued by Comte that, in 
social order, the higher must subordinate 
itself to the lower. That the organic finds 
itself controlled and limited by the inorganic 
world, and man has to work out his destiny 
in submission to all the necessities, physical, 
chemical and vital, which are pre-supposed 
in his existence. "The higher," he con- 
tinued, " can overcome the lower only by 



Il8 THE DESTINIES. 

obedience; if it is to conquer, it must at 
least ' stoop to conquer/ ' And as was once 
stated by Doctor Conolly, "All the superi- 
ority of man, all those faculties which elevate 
and dignify him, this reasoning power, this 
moral sense, these capacities of happiness, 
these high aspiring hopes, are felt and en- 
joyed and manifested by means of the 
nervous system. Its injury weakens, its im- 
perfections limit, its destruction ends them." 
But, it may be asked, is not this a denial 
of "free-will?" Yes, as popularly under- 
stood. A " free-will," in the metaphysical 
sense, is impossible. The conception is 
unknown to the best modern psychology. 
The abstract will, of certain metaphy- 
sicians, is a phantasm. Individual voli- 
tions, only, come within our actual ex- 
perience. They have been generalized, by 
mental philosophers, into a self-existent, 
self-sustaining, and self-procreating entity. 
However, an abstraction is not an essence. 
Such men but tell us what a " free will " 



THE DESTINIES. 119 

should be; that it exists has never been 
demonstrated. Again, the phenomenon 
" will " is now known to be transmitted from 
generation to generation. Heredity teaches 
that its energy and its weakness are con- 
nected with certain states of the organism. 
11 We can no longer doubt the transmission 
takes place by means of the organs, and, 
in fact, that the 'will' is physiological." 
Moreover, in a philosophical sense, the idea 
is " at war" with a uniform law of cause 
and effect. Chance events are inconceiv- 
able in a universe of causation. Freedom 
of the will, therefore, is a delusion. For 
ages men believed that the sun revolved 
around the earth, because it seemed to do 
so. A similar illusion is at the base of our 
ethical system, since we enjoy only the ap- 
pearance of liberty. " Our apparent freedom 
consists in the absence of all physical re- 
straints, and in our power to do as we 
please; but what we please to do depends 
upon our mental constitution and the cir- 



120 THE DESTINIES. 

cumstances in which we are placed." The 
idea was beautifully expressed by Emerson 
in his poem " Fate." 

' - Deep in the man sits fast his fate, 
To mold his fortune, mean or great : 
Unknown to Cromwell as to me 
Was Cromwell's measure or degree ; 
Unknown to him as to his horse, 
If he than his groom be better or worse, 
He works, plots, lights in rude affairs, 
With Squires, Lords, Kings, his craft compares, 
Till late he learned, through doubt and fear, 
Broad England harbored not his peer. 
Obeying time, the last to own 
The genius from its cloudy throne, 
For the prevision is allied 
Unto the thing so signified ; 
Or say, the foresight that aivaits, 
Is the same genius that creates." 

In human history, as in physical nature, 
therefore, every event is linked to its ante- 
cedent by an unavoidable connection, and 
such precedent is connected with an anterior 
effect; and thus the whole would form a 
necessary chain, in which, indeed, each man 
may play his part, but can by no means 
determine what the part shall be. 



THE DESTINIES. 121 

The moral actions of men, said Buckle, 
are the product of their antecedents. In 
other words, when an action is performed, 
it is performed in consequence of certain 
motives; those motives are the results of 
some antecedents; "therefore, if we were 
acquainted with the whole of the antecedents 
and with all the laws of their movements 
we could with certainty foretell the whole 
of their immediate results, This great 
social law is liable to disturbances which 
trouble its operation, without affecting its 
truth." 

Ergo, given any set of circumstances, 
and nothing could have happened, save that 
which did happen; and under exactly the 
same conditions, the conduct of men must 
ever issue in the same results. The past 
should be dismissed without regrets. Our 
position, at any time, should be judged as 
it really is, and not for what we vainly 
suppose it might have been; "for nothing 
is more certain than that we could not have 



122 THE DESTINIES. 

acted differently in any act of our lives, 
with the state of mind and circumstances 
then existing." 

Statistics, likewise, are daily making it 
evident that the same fixed calculable laws 
exist in the departments of life and mind 
as in physics. " In individual cases, or in 
a limited circle, apparent uncertainty may 
exist. Within a given number of cases, 
however, and a large field, invariable results 
may be looked for." 

In the 1 2th annual report of William 
Farr, Esq., to the Registrar General of Eng- 
land, we are told "it may be broadly stated 
that 27 in 1000 men of the population of 
the age of 20 and under 60, are suffering 
from one kind of disease or another; that 
several are of long duration, that others 
are recurrent, and that some are heredi- 
tary." We are informed in a subsequent 
report of the Registrar himself, that it seems 
to be a "law" one person out of every 45, 
living at the commencement of any year, 



THE DESTINIES. 1 23 

will die within that year. (The entire 
system of insurance — life, fire, and marine — 
is erected on the principle contended for 
in this chapter. Not only do a certain 
relative number of men die in each class 
annually, but the law extends to the number 
of policies lapsed each year. There seems 
also to be a periodicity in the number of 
fires and marine disasters.) 

According to Porter and Buckle, even 
" marriage is not determined by the temper 
aild wishes of the individual, but by large 
general facts over which individuals can ex- 
ercise no authority. It is now known that 
marriages bear a fixed and definite relation 
to the price of corn." A century's experi- 
ence in England demonstrates that mar- 
riages are regulated by the average earn- 
ings of the great mass of people. Cheap- 
ness of provision and not love regulates 
the number of nuptials. Combe affirms 
the same striking coincidence in the ratio 
of births in Great Britain. 



124 THE DESTINIES. 

Another singular fact has been deduced 
from the official reports of England and 
France. " Even forgetfulness is under a 
constant law." Buckle is an authority for 
the statement that " year after year, the 
same proportion of letter-writers forget to 
direct their letters, in some part; so that 
for each successive period we can actually 
foretell the number of persons whose memory 
will fail them in regard to this trifling oc- 
currence." 

By the same witness we prove " the uni- 
form reproduction of crime is more clearly 
marked, and more capable of being pre- 
dicted than are the physical laws connected 
with the disease and destruction of our 
bodies." Before this, Combe had observed 
a similar uniformity, under similar circum- 
stances, of the recurrence of crimes. He 
perceived in human conduct the same strik- 
ing indications of constancy in results, as in 
the prevalence of disease and the endur- 
ance of life. Combe said, in 1854, in writ- 



THE DESTINIES. 12R 

ing by way of comment on, a certain report 
to the House of Commons: " During the 
five years, ending with the last year of an 
execution, there were committed for the 
crimes enumerated, 7276 persons, of whom 
196 were executed. During the five years 
immediately following the last execution, 
there were committed for the same offense 
7120. Does not this show that these crimes 
arose from causes in themselves permanent, 
and which punishment does not remove?" 
Rawson also remarked that the greatest 
variation which had taken place during 
three years, in the proportion of any class 
of criminals, at the same period of life, had 
not exceeded a half per cent. 

And Dr. Brown states (Vol. 8 of the 
Assurance Magazine), that " in twenty years, 
the number of persons accused of various 
crimes in France, and registered under their 
respective ages, scarcely varies at any age, 
from year to year, comparing the propor- 
tional per cent under each age with the 



126 THE DESTINIES. 

totals. M. Quatelet deduced from the sta- 
tistical returns of government in the same 
country, that for 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829 and 
1830, in each year, there was one person 
accused out of every 4463 inhabitants, and 
61 condemned out of every 100 accused. 
" In everything which concerns crime," ob- 
served this greatest of statisticians, " the 
same numbers re-occur with a constancy 
which cannot be mistaken, and that this is 
the case, even with those crimes which seem 
quite independent of human foresight, such, 
for instance, as murders, which are gener- 
ally committed after quarrels arising from 
circumstances apparently casual. Neverthe- 
less, we know from experience, that every 
year there not only take place the same 
number of murders, but even the instru- 
ments by which they are committed, are 
employed in the same proportion." Murder, 
then, " occurs with as much regularity as 
the movements of the tides and the rota- 
tion of the seasons," 



THE DESTINIES. I 27 

" Self-murder," Buckle observes, " seems 
to be not only capricious and uncontrol- 
able, but also very obscure in regard to 
proof. Yet, in • different countries, for 
which we have returns, we find, year by 
year, the same proportion of persons put- 
ting an end to their own existence. In 
London, for example, about 240 persons 
make away with themselves every year; the 
annual suicides oscillating, from the pressure 
of temporary causes, between 266, the highest, 
a^id 213, the lowest. In 1846, which was 
the great year of excitement — caused by 
the railroad panic — the suicides in London 
were 266; in 1847 began a slight improve- 
ment, and they fell to 256; in 1848 they 
were 247; in 1849 they were 213; in 1850 
they were 229. 

In the " Journey through India," Heber 
mentions the vain attempt of the English 
government to check the frequent suicides 
by drowning, committed at Benares; and 
August Comte has exposed the folly of 



128 THE DESTINIES. 

thinking that suicide can be diminished by 
the enactments of law-givers. 

Of this field, Quatelet says, in conclusion: 
" The possibility of assigning, beforehand, 
the number of accused and condemned 
which should occur in a country, is calcu- 
lated to lead to serious reflections, since 
it involves the fate of several thousands of 
human beings, who are impelled, as it were, 
by an irresistible necessity, to the bar of 
the tribunal, and towards the sentences of 
condemnation that there await them. These 
conclusions flow directly from the prin- 
ciple, already so often stated in this work, 
that effects are in proportion to their 
causes, and that the effects remain the 
same, if the causes which produced them 
do not vary." 

Another step is needed to complete our 
argument in this branch. Actions are the 
production of motives. Motives are the 
effects of determinate antecedents. Whence 
these antecedents? They are to be found 



THE DESTINIES. I2Q 

in the " Law of Heredity." Reproduction 
is governed by law, and " like begets like." 
To quote from Voltaire : " The physical, 
which is ' father of the moral/ transmits 
the same character from father to son for 
ages. The Appii were ever proud and in- 
flexible ; the Catos always austere. The 
whole line of the Guises were bold, rash, 
factious, full of the most insolent pride and 
most winning politeness. From Francis de 
Guise down to that one who put himself 
at ihe head of the people of Naples, they 
were all in look, courage and character 
above ordinary men. I have seen full length 
portraits of Francis, of Balafre and his son: 
they were all six feet high, and they all 
possess the same features — the same auda- 
city on the brow, in the eyes, and in the 
attitude." M. Taine sees in Lord Byron 
a true descendant of the Berserkers. To 
Ribot, the French of the 19th century are 
the Gauls described by Caesar and Strabo. 
Amphere writes of the character of the 



I3O THE DESTINIES. 

Greeks, that it has not changed; " he has 
now the same qualities, the same defects 
as of old." The physiology and mentality 
of parents characterize their offspring. The 
human mind is not a blank at birth. Its 
capabilities and character are inherited. 
Every possibility of the soul is innate and 
constitutional from the moment of gestation. 
Such is the verdict of science substantiated 
by Ribot, Galton, and Fowler. 

That the peculiar anatomy and physi- 
ognomy of races is persistent and hereditary, 
must be admitted. The truth is verified 
by every-day experience. We see it in the 
Englishman, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, 
and Scandinavian. The intellectual char- 
acteristics of a people are likewise trans- 
mitted from generation to generation. 
The Indian, for example, is ever wild, 
free, cunning and revengeful. Negroes, 
on the other hand, are generally timid, 
garrulous, urbane and polite. The He- 
brews, again, are noteworthy for intellectual 



THE DESTINIES. 131 

calibre, the acquisitive faculty, and a clan- 
nish spirit. 

In the family, likewise, likenesses and 
stature pass from generation to generation. 
So, also, of size. Fowler found this exempli- 
fied everywhere. Some of his illustrations 
were taken from the Websters, Franklins, 
and Folgers. Muscular strength is heredi- 
tary, as with the Douglas, Fessenden, and 
Garrish families. Physical deformities and 
excrescences obey this edict of nature; and 
it includes disease, insanity, gray hair, pre- 
mature death, propensities, length of life 
and beauty. The truth is overwhelming 
that mental faculties and qualities descend 
from child to child. These sequences in 
mental phenomena operate through gener- 
ations upon caution, self-esteem, firmness, 
pride, benevolence, and religious feeling. 
Talent and ability go by descent. Even 
genius, although akin to divine, is transmis- 
sible. " Each generation," said Galton, 
" has enormous power over the natural gifts 



132 THE DESTINIES. 

of those that follow. . . . The results of 
an examination into the kindred of about 
400 illustrious men of all periods of history 
were such, in my own opinion, as com- 
pletely to establish the theory that genius 
was hereditary/' 

Now for my application. Gambling, in 
some form, is a propensity of the general 
mind: an inclination now hereditary in the 
race. That such must be the case is clear 
from Ribot, Maudsley and Da Gama Ma- 
chado. " The dead rule over the living," 
writes Spencer. " Past generations exercise 
power over present generations, by trans- 
mitting their nature, bodily and mental." 

The origin and development of gambling 
were obvious to the eminent astronomer, 
Richard A. Proctor. " Beyond doubt," he 
said, "the element of chance which enters 
into all lives, has had a most potent influ- 
ence in moulding the characters of men. If 
we consider the multitudinous fancies and 
superstitions of men like sailors, farmers, 



THE DESTINIES. 1 33 

and hunters, whose lives depend more on 
chance than those of men in some other 
employments, and recognize this as the 
natural effect of the influence which chance 
has on their fortunes, we need not consider 
it strange if the influence of chance, in 
moulding the minds and characters of our 
ancestors during countless generations, should 
have produced a very marked effect on 
human nature. An immense number of 
those from whom I inherit descent must, 
in the old savage days, have depended 
almost wholly upon chance for the very 
means of subsistence. When, wild in wood, 
the savage ran, he ran on speculation. He 
might, or he might not, be lucky enough 
to earn his living on any day, by a successful 
chase, or by finding such fruits of the earth 
as would supply him with a satisfactory 
amount of food. He might have much de- 
pending on chances which he could not 
avoid risking, as the gambler of to-day has 
when he 'sees red' and stakes his whole 



134 THE DESTINIES. 

fortune on a throw of the dice or a turn 
of the cards. We cannot be doubtful about 
the effects of such chance influences even 
on the individual character. Repeated, 
generation after generation, they must have 
tended to fill men with a gambling spirit, 
only to be corrected by innumerable gener- 
ations of steady labor; and, unfortunately, 
even in the steadiest work, the element of 
chance enters largely enough to render the 
corrective influence of such work on the 
character of the race much slower than it 
might otherwise be. Every man who has 
to work for his living at all, every man 
who has to depend in any way, on business 
for wealth, has to trust to chance, in many 
respects. So that all men, in some degree, 
more or less, have their characters modified 
by this peculiarity of their environment. 
The inherited tendency of each one of us 
towards gambling, in some one or other of 
its multitudinous forms, is undoubtedly 
strengthened in this way." 



THE DESTINIES. 1 35 

First, we see, it cannot be said that 
gambling is immoral, sinful, or irreligious. 
Second, it is clear the propensity to gamble 
is as natural as the temperament or com- 
plexion. The law can no more destroy the 
natural inclination of the mind, than it can 
make "one hair white or black." If an evil 
(which in the absolute sense I deny), it is 
not to be prevented by legislation. It is 
no more possible, by direct effort, to change 
the gaming proclivity in man than to stem 
the torrent, or check the eternal progress 
of the glacier. The growth of centuries, 
down it moves through the years in an 
irresistible march. Absurd seem all our 
demonstrations; how idle, the beating of the 
air. When one form passes away another 
immediately takes its place. Disappearing 
here, it appears there. Apparently sup- 
pressed in one place it breaks out with more 
vigor in another. Continue it will, and con- 
tinue it must, whether practiced openly or 
in secret. If it is not the faro-bank or 



156 THE DESTINIES. 

lottery it is something worse. If not the 
gambling-rooms of a Morrissey, a Daly, a 
Pendleton or a Hankins, it will be the mam- 
moth palaces (boards of trade and chambers 
of commerce, so-called) , which now are a 
feature of every city in Christendom, and 
wherein millions upon millions are wagered 
annually upon the very bread and meat 
wherewith our life is sustained; wherein 
billions are lost and won, sometimes to the 
injury of every department of actual pro- 
duction. There are the open boards of 
trade, too, .wherein the petty transactions 
aggregate many millions. I am told by 
those who have made it a study for years, 
that more than 80 per cent of the trans- 
actions on the exchange are fictitious: mere 
betting on the rise and fall of commodities 
in price. All authority in this matter is 
practically powerless. Inclinations will be 
satisfied, and until inclinations change, the 
demand will be supplied; this, moreover, in 
the face of laws however stringent, or police 



THE DESTINIES. 1 37 

supervision however effective. Such methods 
are not only ineffective, but absolutely in- 
jurious to society. No nation or govern- 
ment has succeeded in restricting, limiting, 
or curing the gambling spirit and practice. 
That this is true, I call upon every candid 
and fair-minded man of experience to bear 
witness. I appeal to lawyers, judges, states- 
men, scientists, philosophers, and the police 
and municipal authorities throughout the 
United States and Europe to corroborate 
my statement. The sooner this is generally 
realized, the better for humanity. What I 
have to suggest, instead of the present 
policy, is reserved for consideration in an- 
other place. I may say here, however, that 
for the law to punish what it cannot thereby 
cure is absurd — absurd as is every attempt 
to accomplish the impossible. Systematic 
education is the only hope; incessant train- 
ing the only remedy for appetites and pro- 
pensities; either for their correction, restraint, 
or subversion. If it had been revealed to 



138 THE DESTINIES. 

man that gambling is a sin, even that would 
not vitiate our reasoning in this chapter. 
God, or absolute wisdom, should be able 
to reconcile the existence of an evil with 
His own Sovereignty. However, this chapter 
is not concerned with the realities of re- 
ligion, or the true principles of philosophy. 
As human conceptions, they have been noted 
as in accord with the teachings of science; 
to show that the human intellect responds 
intuitively to what are subsequently known 
as the laws of nature. 



legislative Eyorcism; 



or, 



Gbe Belief in Worb^flfcaoic, 



CHAPTER IV. 

^Legislative JEjoreism; or, XTbe Belief 
in XKHorD^/IDacjic. 

FOR ages, mankind were believers in 
magic. One of the phases was Ex- 
orcism, or a pretended exercise of super- 
natural power, through certain words of 
magic import. " Healing words," says Van 
Helmont, " were used against the devil and 
all diseases." And it is asserted by the 
Zendavesta that " many cures are performed 
by words." That the magic power of words 
was a belief of the Greeks and Romans, is 
evident from their literature. Thus it is 
said of Plotin, that while in Sicily he cured 
Porphyrius of a fever, "by wonder-working 
words." We are told how Orpheus' song 

(141) 



142 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

calmed the storm, and how Ulysses " stopped 
the bleeding of wounds Ly the use of certain 
words." They also tell us, that with words, 
Cato cured sprains; Marcus Varrus removed 
tumors ; and Servilius Novianno restored 
sight to the eyes. It is -gravely stated by 
Pliny that Cato did not alone use the words, 
" motas, daries, dardaries, astaries," but like- 
wise a green branch, four or five feet long, 
which he split in two, and caused to be held 
over the injured limb. A similar power was 
ascribed to the philosopher, Pythagoras. 
And if "ye olden chronicle " is to be credited, 
the curses of Peter of Amiens and Bernard 
of Clairvaux, " produced fearful spasms and 
sufferings, whilst their blessings restored 
speech to the dumb and health to the sick." 
The belief in magic is not general in our 
age of the world. It has gradually retired 
before the march of reason and the light of 
scientific truth. That all nature, organic and 
inorganic, animate and inanimate, is subject 
to a universal law of cause and effect, is now 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. I43 

a truism to every educated person. Science 
has forever destroyed the curative influence 
of phrases. Reason sternly excludes verbal 
formulae, from the realm of physical causation. 
That any mere words may be used against 
disease or injury is now denied by enlight- 
ened opinion the world over. In medicine, 
therefore, Exorcism is a thing of the past. 

One aspect of the superstition still re- 
mains, as an obstacle to the progress of 
humanity; the possibility of legislating mo- 
rality into men. Law-givers still cling to 
the power of " exorcism" by statute. Their 
blind creed is: " beatification and education 
by law." " To them, laws are the cows, whose 
teats mankind should suck. To them, men 
are as dough, which their wisdom would 
knead." This adoration of the law and 
legislators was systematically inculcated by 
the 1 8th century publicists: Montesquieu, 
Robespierre, Rousseau, and St. Just. They 
seem to teach that " the law cannot come out 
of us, but must be poured into us," But, as 



144 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

Erlanger has said with truth, he who under- 
takes to give institutions to a people must 
feel within himself the capacity to change 
human nature, to metamorphose every man, 
to transmute the constitution of each indi- 
vidual, to strengthen them; in one word, 
" he must take from mankind their own 
powers, and impart to them a foreign 
power." 

Statesmen should recognize with Car- 
penter, that " society is the gigantic growth 
of centuries, moving on in a resistless and 
orderly march, with the precision and fatality 
of an astronomic orb." The huge being 
marches on with elephantine tread. The 
liberal sits on its front and the conservative 
on its rear; but both are swept along, whether 
they will or not, and both are shaken off ere 
long, inevitably, into the dust. One reformer 
shouts " this way," and another cries "-that," 
but down comes the great foot and crushes 
both, indifferently; the man who thought he 
was right, and the man who found he was 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 145 

wrong; crushing, alike, him who would facili- 
tate, and him who would impede its progress. 
At least, it should be kept in mind, " that 
laws are made by the people, and not the 
people by the laws." Modern society is so 
burdened by an enormous' and complex over- 
growth of law, that the necessity for its ex- 
istence is now a prevailing notion, to the 
end that men may be kept in order: that, 
without the oppressive institution, people 
would not follow a systematic life. On the 
other hand, all observation of civilized races 
discovers the directly opposite. The instinct 
of man is to regularity of life, and law is 
but a result or expression of this. " As well 
attribute the organization of a crab to the 
influence of its shell, as ascribe the orderly 
life of a nation to the action of its laws." 
The law may have a purpose, but to believe 
it will preserve order is illusive. This it 
certainly does not effect, even with all its 
machinery of police, courts and prisons. 
Fichte said: "The object of all government 



I46 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

is to render government superfluous/ 7 The 
same idea has been expressed by Whitman 
and Paine. Moreover, " if external authority, 
of any kind, has a final purpose, it must 
be to establish and consolidate an internal 
authority. When this process is complete, 
government, in the ordinary sense, is already 
rendered superfluous." 

The world has been slow (or loath) to 
learn the only proper functions of govern- 
ment. This must be clear to every reader 
of Bruce Smith, Lieber and Dick. In the 
governments of oriental antiquity, political 
authority was clothed with a super-eminent 
and absolute jurisdiction over the whole 
life of its subjects; " the manners of their 
subjects, their rank, their condition, mode 
of life, and daily occupations, were all fixed 
by the law." 

And, in the opinion of Grecian philoso- 
phers, the state was everything, the individual 
nothing. In their judgment, the government 
should not permit any individual to waste 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. I47 

his power and energy, nor should he be 
allowed to misdirect it. They insisted the 
law must first devise the model of a perfect 
citizen ; and then, by a system of discipline, 
mould, or rather distort, into agreement 
therewith, the character of every citizen. 
The powers of state, therefore, should em- 
brace individual life in its entirety; from 
infancy to mature age, "in all conditions 
and relations, whether domestic, religious, 
social, industrial or political." 

Such teachings had their illustration in 
the administration of Greek governments. 
In Sparta, for example, under the reign of 
Lycurgus, the citizen belonged to the state, 
rather than to the family. The individual 
Athenian did not have a right the Archons 
were " bound to respect." Draco punished 
even laziness with death, and Solon pro- 
hibited costly sacrifices at funerals. In 
Greece, Lycurgus seems to have been the 
first legislator against luxury. He enacted, 
for example, that no Spartan should own a 



148 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

house, or household article, which had been 
made with a finer implement than an axe or 
a saw; and that no cook should use any 
other spice than salt and vinegar. Our 
authorities are Ephorus and Diogenes La- 
ertius. The sumptuary prohibitions of Solon, 
according to Plutarch, were aimed at the 
female passion for dress, as well as the pomp 
of funerals. He likewise placed surveillance 
over the luxury of banquets. 

The Dorian races were disposed to 
austere and rigid habits of life. A La- 
conian could not lawfully attend a drink- 
ing entertainment. In Lacedaemonia, fru- 
gality and simplicity were the object of the 
pheiditia. Gold and silver were interdicted, 
and their legislation permitted the use of 
iron money alone. In Magna Graecia, the 
Pythagoreans encouraged the sumptuary 
policy. Zaleucus, the Locrian legislator, en- 
acted that no woman should appear in public 
wearing gold ornaments, or embroidered 
apparel, unless her designs were unchaste. 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 149 

Roman statesmen were not wiser, in their 
day, than those of Greece. From the time 
of the Kings, they sought by law to regulate 
luxurious tendencies. We find it in the law 
of the Twelve Tables: " Do not carve the 
wood which is to serve for a funeral pile. 
Have no weeping women to tear their 
cheeks; no gold, no coronets. ,, Certain 
foreign articles of luxury were prohibited 
about 189 b. c. An important part of the 
legislation of Sulla, Caesar, Crassus, Antony, 
Augustus and Tiberius, related to the ex- 
penditures for food, funerals and games of 
chance. Says Plutarch : " The Romans 
thought the liberty ought not to be left to 
each private citizen to marry at will, to 
choose his manner of life, to make feasts; 
in short, to follow his desires and his tastes, 
without being subject to the judgment and 
supervision of anyone." The Oppian Law 
forbade matrons to have more than a half- 
ounce of gold, to wear garments of diversi- 
fied color, or to use carriages in Rome. 



150 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

Following a revolt of the Women, in 195 
b. c, this law was abrogated. Inspired by 
Cato, the Censor, fourteen years later, the 
Orchian Law was promulgated. It limited 
the table expenses, as did the Fannian Law 
twenty years after. The Lex Orchia limited 
the number of guests to be present at a 
feast. The general cost of entertainment 
was fixed by the Lex Fannia. A limit of 
one hundred asses was established for some 
festivals, and thirty asses for others. Ordin- 
ary entertainments were restricted to ten 
asses. The Didian Law extended to all 
Italy. 

In Greece, sumptuary laws were seldom 
or never regarded by the people, who always 
entered into a tacit and general conspiracy 
against their enforcement. Notwithstanding 
the Roman notatio censoria, luxury continued 
to increase with the growth of wealth. No 
law of senate or emperor could restrain the 
tendency. " From first to last," writes the 
historian, "all were habitually transgressed." 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 151 

In the time of Tertullian they appear to 
be of the past. 

Instances of like legislation disfigure the 
statue-books of every civilized country down- 
ward from the fifth certury, a. d. All sumptu- 
ary laws, at Rome, were formally repealed 
by the later emperors; but the folly there- 
after re-appeared when European society 
began to rally and segregate under Charle- 
magne. To illustrate, " in the latter middle 
ages, knights were allowed to wear gold, 
and esquires only silver; the former damask, 
the latter satin of taffeta; when the esquires 
used damask, velvet was reserved for the 
knights." The first legislation of this char- 
acter, in the modern world, was enacted by 
Frederick II., in Italy; James I., in Aragon; 
Philip IV., in France; Edward II. and Ed- 
ward III., in England. Commencing in 
France with Charlemagne, it first became 
extensive and flourished under Philip IV. and 
Charles VI. From Edward III. until the 
Reformation, it was in great favor in 



152 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

England. Great was the absurdity to which 
legislators were carried by this vain policy. 
In Scotland, for example, one parliament 
forbade ladies to attend church with the 
face muffled in a veil, and another fulmin- 
ated against superfluous banqueting and the 
inordinate use of foreign spices; while a 
Danish law provided that no servant girl 
should wear her hair curled. The edicts of 
Philip IV. related to extravagance at table 
and in dress. An edict of Charles V. for- 
bade the use of long-pointed shoes. Charles 
VI. allowed no one to exceed a soup and 
two dishes at dinner. Later French kings 
sought to restrict the use of gold, silver, 
silks, embroidery, and fine linen. From 
Blanqui we take a sample ordinance of the 
character under consideration. "The said 
Lord the King, being duly informed that 
the great superfluity of meat at weddings, 
feasts and banquets, brings about the high 
price of fowls and game, wills' and decrees 
that the ordinance on this subject be renewed 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. I 53 

and kept; and for the continuance of the 
same, that those who make such feasts, as 
well as the stewards who prepare and con- 
duct them, and the cooks who serve them, 
be punished with the penalties hereunto 
affixed. That every sort of fowl and game 
brought to the markets shall be seen and 
visited by the poulterer-wardens, in the pres- 
ence of the officers of the police and bour- 
geois clerks to the aforesaid, who shall be 
present at the said markets, and shall cause 
a report to be made to the police, by the 
said w r ardens. The public shall be likewise 
bound to live according to the ordinance of 
the King, without exceeding the limit, under 
penalty of such pecuniary fines as are herein 
set forth against the inn-keeper, so that 
neither by private understanding nor common 
consent shall the ordinance be violated." 
During the same year, another ordinance 
provided " that no bourgeois woman shall 
have a chariot; no bourgeois man or woman 
shall wear green, or grey, or ermine, and 



154 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

they shall dispose of those they have, by a 
year from Easter next. The dukes, counts 
and barons of 6000 livres, in land, or more, 
may have four robes a year, and no more, 
and the women as many. A knight who 
has 3000 livres, in land, may have three robes 
a year and no more; and one of these three 
robes shall be for summer. At the principal 
meals of the day no one shall have but two 
viands and a pork soup, and let him not de- 
ceive about it. It is ordained that no prelate 
or baron shall have a robe for body of more 
than 25 Tournish sous, a Paris ell." In 
1294 it was decreed " that every manner 
of people, who have not an income of 6000 
Tournish livres, shall not use, and will not 
be able to use, any gold or silver plate for 
drinking, for eating, or for other use, and 
that no person, under penalty of fine and 
imprisonment, shall practice any fraud about 
it." 

In France, laws of this character disap- 
peared near the end of the 16th century. 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 1 55 

Under Louis XV., all such laws were practi- 
cally a dead letter. " These ordinances are 
the history of but yesterday," says an able 
and profound student of French legislation; 
"but ideas and sentiments have gone far 
in advance of facts. We have difficulty in 
comprehending the interference of govern- 
ment in the domestic affairs of families, and 
in contracts which concern only private indi- 
viduals. Opinion has undergone an entire 
revolution. Sumptuary laws can no longer 
be proposed. We need not think the change 
is due to our wisdom, to our pretended superi- 
ority to the ancients; let us simply recognize 
that the essential principle of society has 
changed; the world moves on another basis. 
. . In no century were these laws ob- 
served to any great extent. Enactments of 
this kind were never effectual in France. 
Since the Revolution, no sumptuary laws 
have been enacted, and yet the luxury of 
attire which formerly distinguished the no- 
bility has disappeared. A duke dresses like 



156 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

anybody else, and he would be ridiculed if 
he sought to distinguish himself by a manner 
of dress different from others." 

It has been observed by one of the 
great statesmen of England, that the broad 
principles of freedom had been early recog- 
nized in that country, and understood by 
even the citizens of minimum intelligence; 
for instance, freedom of locomotion, freedom 
in the disposition of property, freedom of 
opinion in politics and religion. But that 
other important features of the same prin- 
ciple were not so quickly and clearly under- 
stood. "I refer," he continues, "to such 
matters as freedom of commercial intercourse 
and exchange, freedom of contract in the 
natural rise and fall of wages and in the 
condition of labor; freedom of individual 
taste and expenditure, in the more private 
concerns of life. In many cases, these were 
matters which affected the poor and rich 
alike, but principally the poor, who, in their 
meagre parliamentary representation, en- 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. I 57 

joyed few opportunities for effectual protest. 
One can only account for the continuance 
of those which materially affected the better 
classes, who did enjoy representation, to 
the fact that, not being familiar with the 
fundamental economic laws, which are now 
so widely understood, they were not prompted 
to any practical resistance. It is highly 
probable, too, that for want of this know- 
ledge, most people rested satisfied with the 
vague idea that, in some way or other, 
though not very clear, such restrictive legis- 
lation produced some good to somebody." 
We pass over those legislative and executive 
interferences, which present " every possible 
contrivance for hampering the energies of 
commerce." Purely economic questions are 
not germane to our discussion; such as the 
numerous and ingenious restraints upon 
foreign trade; the attempts to regulate the 
rate of wages and the price of food. 

Richard II., Henry IV., and Edward IV. 
legislated against the liveried suits of the 



158 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

nobility. This was also prohibited by Henry 
VII.; and yet, even under James I., says 
Hume, " we find ambassadors accompanied 
by a suite of 500 or 300 noblemen." During 
the reign of Edward III. it was enacted that 
no man should be allowed more than two 
courses at dinner or supper, or more than 
two kinds of food in each course. Three 
courses were permitted on the festival days 
of the year. Foreign cloth was allowed to 
the royal family alone. Unless a man pos- 
sessed at least £100 per annum he was for- 
bidden furs, skins and silks. During the 
same reign, another act divided the people 
of England into classes, and prescribed the 
apparel of each. In the social scale it did 
not go higher than knights, and minutely 
regulated the clothing of women and chil- 
dren. It was repealed the following year. 
In 1363 it was enacted that servants should 
have only one meal a day of flesh or fish. 
The statute of 1444 attempted to regulate 
the price of clothing for each year: a bailiff, 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 1 59 

5<as\; principal servant, 40s.; ordinary servant, 
33.9. \d. James I., of Scotland, forbade not 
only " sumptuous clothing," but the use of 
pies and baked meats, to all under the rank 
of baron. The Scottish sumptuary law of 
1612 was the last in Great Britain. The 
English laws were largely repealed during 
the reign of James I. A few remained on the 
statute book as late as 1856. Mr. Froude has 
exposed the folly of their existence. 

It has been said of the English laws they 
" were at all times inspired by a desire to 
arrest an irresistible movement, resulting 
from the very force of things — from the 
logical development of human activity. 
They were, moreover, powerless, and always 
evaded by a sort of tacit and general con- 
spiracy of all the citizens, without anyone 
being able to find fault with the principle, 
without anyone thinking of contesting the 
power of the legislator on this point." 

Roscher remarks: " In Ireland the gov- 
ernment had endeavored for a long time to 



l6o LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

preserve that country from the ravages of 
alcohol, by the imposition of the highest 
taxes, and the severest penalties for smug- 
gling. Every workman in an illegal distillery 
was transported for seven years, and every 
town in which such a one was found was 
subject to a heavy fine. All in vain. Only 
numberless acts of violence were now added 
to beastly drunkenness/' 

In another place, Roscher continues thus: 
" Where it has been attempted to suppress 
the consumption of popular delicacies, the 
impossibility of enforcing sumptuary laws 
has been most strikingly observed. Thus, 
in the 16th century, an effort was made as 
regards brandy; in the 17th, as regards to- 
bacco; in the 18th, as regards coffee. The 
Hessian law of 1530 provided that only 
apothecaries should retail brandy. In 1624 
Papal excommunication was fulminated 
against all who took snuff in church, and 
was repeated in 1690. According to a 
Turkish law of 1610, all smokers should have 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. l6l 

their pipes broken against the nose. In 1634 
a Russian law prohibited smoking under 
penalty of death. In Switzerland, even in 
the 17th century, no one could smoke except 
in secret. In its native place even coffee 
had a hard struggle. Prohibited in Turkey 
in 1633 under pain of death; it was still 
prohibited in Basel in 1769, and could be 
sold by apothecaries only as medicine. In 
Hanover the coffee trade was prohibited in 
1780. When governments discovered the 
fruitlessness of these efforts, they gave up 
the prohibition of these luxuries, and instead 
substituted taxes on them, thus aiming to 
combine a moral and a fiscal end. Even 
Cato took this course. His office of censor, 
which united the highest moral superinten- 
dence with the highest financial guidance, 
must of itself have led. him in this direction. 
Strange it is how slowly men learn by 
experience. We know of the many oppres- 
sions in England " for opinion's sake." 
History tells us that the puritan fathers 



1 62 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

sought " freedom of conscience" in the wilds 
of America. Yet, scarcely were the " pil- 
grims'' of New England wonted to a strange 
and inhospitable land, than what they re- 
quired for themselves was denied to others. 
In their fanaticism, the "soul liberty'* of 
Roger Williams was violated in every con- 
ceivable way. Personal freedom was vio- 
lated to an extent that is now the detestation 
of right-thinking persons. Execrable for 
their tyrannical spirit, are some of the records 
of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven 
Colony and Connecticut. The following 
extracts are taken from the records of the 
General Court of the Colony of Massachu- 
setts Bay: 

" 1635: Whereas, complaints hath bene 
made to this Courte that dyvers persons, 
within this jurisdiction, doe usually absent 
themselves from Church meetings upon the 
Lord's Day, power is therefore given to any 
two assistants to heare and sensure, either 
by fine or imprisonment, all misdemeanors 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 163 

of that kind, committed by any inhabitant 
within this jurisdiction, provided they ex- 
ceede not the fine of 15 shillings for any 
one offense." 

" 1669: Any person or persons that shalle 
be found smoking tobacco on the Lord's 
Day, going to or coming from the meetings, 
within two miles of the meeting house, shall 
pay 12 pence for every such default to the 
colonies' use." 

" 1692: All and every justices of the peace, 
constables and tything men are required to 
restrain all persons from swimming in the 
water; unnecessary and unreasonable walk- 
ing in the streets or fields in the toun of 
Boston, or other places; in the evening pre- 
ceding the Lord's Day, or any other part 
of the said day or the evening following." 

" 1634: The court, taking into consider- 
ation the greate, superfluous and unneces- 
sary expenses occassioned by some newe 
and immodest fashions, as also the ordinary 
wearing of golde, silver, silke, laces, girdles, 



1 64 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

hat-bands, etc., hath, therefore, ordered that 
noe person, either man or woman, shall here- 
after make or buy any apparell, either woolen, 
silke or lynen, with any lace on it, silver, 
golde, silke or thread, under the penalty of 
the forfeiture of such clothes." 

''1782: Be it enacted that each person, 
being able of body and mind, not otherwise 
necessarily prevented, who shall, for the 
space of one month together, absent himself 
or herself from the public worship of God, 
on the Lord's Day, shall forfeit and pay 
the sum of ten shillings. ,, 

In old Connecticut we find legislation 
similar in character. In 1647: " Forasmuch, 
as it is observed that many abuses are crept 
in and committed by the frequent taking of 
tobacco, it is ordered by the authority of 
this Court, that no person under the age of 
20 years, nor any other that hath not accus- 
tomed himself to the use thereof, shall take 
any tobacco until he hath brought a certifi- 
cate under the hands of some who are ap- 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 165 

proved for knowledge and skill in physic, 
that it is useful to him and that he hath 
received a license from the Court for the 
same." 

"1643: Whoever shall prophane the Lord's 
Day, or any part of it, by unlawful sport, 
recreation or otherwise, whether wilfully or 
in careless neglect, shall be duly punished by 
fine, imprisonment, or corporally, according 
to the nature and measure of the sin and 
offense." 

Here are some of the celebrated New 
Haven " Blue Laws:" 

"Whoever wears clothes trimmed with 
golde, silver or bone lace, above two shillings 
by the yard, shall be presented to the Grand 
Jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the 
offender at ^300 estate." 

" No one shall read Common Prayer, keep 
Xmas or Saint's Days, make minced pies, 
dance, play cards, or play on any instrument 
of music, except the drum, trumpet and 
jew's-harp." 



l66 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

" No one shall run on the Sabbath Day, 
or walk in the Garden or elsewhere, except 
reverently to and from meeting." 

" No one shall travel, cook victuals, make 
beds, sweep house, cut hair or shave, on the 
Sabbath Day." 

" No woman shall kiss her child on the 
Sabbath or fasting day." 

" If any man shall kiss his wife, or any 
wife her husband, on the Lord's Day, the 
party in fault shall be punished at the dis- 
cretion of the Court of Magistrates." 

" Every man and woman duly, twice a 
day, upon the first tolling of the bell, repair 
into the church to heare divine service upon 
pain of losing his or her day's allowance, 
for the first omission; for the second to be 
whipped, and for the third to be condemned 
to the galleys for six months." 

" If any man, after legall conviction, shall 
have or worship any other god but the Lord 
God, hee shall bee put to death." 

" If any person turns Quaker, he shall 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. \6j 

be banished and not suffered to return, upon 
the pains of death." 

'" No priest shall abide in this dominion, 
he shall be banished and suffer death on 
his return." 

" No man shall hold any office who is 
not sound in the faith." 

" No food or lodging shall be afforded 
to a Quaker, Adamite, or other heretic." 

" Every man shall have his hair cut round 
according to a cap." 

Such are a few of the laws that disgrace 
the beginning of our national life. Repealed 
they never were, save by the scorn of time, 
or the revolt of the human heart, as it 
struggled into a wider and brighter existence. 
They were only effective as the expression 
of a spirit then prevalent. Forward marched 
the soul, and behind is left the hideous husk. 
Here and there, on the statute books of 
certain states, vestiges may remain of Sabba- 
tarian legislation, but they are a dead letter, to 
enforce which is seldom or never attempted. 



1 68 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

Roscher observes, "That the puritanical 
laws, which some of the states have passed 
prohibiting all sales of spirituous liquors, 
except for ecclesiastical, medical or chemical 
purposes, have been found impossible of 
enforcement." Said Dr. Dio Lewis on this 
subject: "A very striking illustration of the 
weakness of law, when it comes in contact 
with the instinct of liberty, is the result of 
prohibition in Maine. I have taken pains 
to learn the facts in that state. I traveled 
it throughout and conversed with a large 
number of its leading citizens, almost ex- 
clusively temperance men, and became satis- 
fied (notwithstanding the prohibitory law), 
that intemperance is the great overwhelming 
curse of the Pine Tree State." The Doctor 
then found fully 300 grog shops in Bangor. 
He says of Portland, also, the number of 
arrests for drunkenness in 1874 was 201 1. 
He is authority for the statement that, 
in 1873, the state prison inspectors of 
Maine reported the enormous number of 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. l6Q 

17,808 arrests for drunkenness during that 
year. 

Hon. James McGinnis, of the St. Louis 
bar, several years ago, gave the prohibitory 
legislation of the whole country (and its 
practical workings) an exhaustive consider- 
ation in all aspects. The results of his study, 
published to the world, revealed the same 
condition of affairs in Maine, New Hamp- 
shire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
Connecticut, New York, Delaware, Mary- 
land, Ohio, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, and 
Kansas. On every hand, past and present, 
he " beheld the impracticability of prohibi- 
tion." " I now appeal,'' he says, " to the 
fair-minded reader to give his thoughtful 
attention to the facts and figures which I 
have truly and fairly presented, to show that 
neither crime, pauperism, intemperance, nor 
any of the ills which are popularly supposed 
to grow out of intemperance, have been at 
all lessened by prohibition." 

The political economists are practically 



I70 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

unanimous in their reprobation of these laws. 
Adam Smith vigorously protests against their 
impertinence and presumption. Of sumptu- 
ary laws it has been said their enforcement 
is exceedingly difficult, as it is always harder 
to superintend consumption than production. 
" The latter is conducted in definite localities. 
The former is carried on in the secrecy of 
a thousand homes. Besides, such laws have 
very often the effect to make forbidden fruit 
all the sweeter." Spite of the penalties at- 
tached to their violation, and of redoubled 
measures of control, government after gov- 
ernment have been compelled to admit their 
failure in this direction. Laws of this nature 
always involve an abridgement of individual 
" liberty," and of the natural right of every 
man to do what he "will" with his own. 
They involve the assumption, also, that a 
government, with the exercise of paternal 
authority can judge better than the citizen 
what will best subserve his or her welfare, 
in the use of what they have. " But such 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 171 

action belongs more properly to the spiritual 
than to the temporal power. In ancient 
life, where there was a confusion of the two 
powers in the state system, sumptuary legis- 
lation was more natural than in the modern 
world, where those powers have been gener- 
ally, though imperfectly, separated.'' 

"I have learned to doubt," wrote Dr. 
Dio Lewis, " whether law is very potent in 
the cure of moral evil. Force is a good 
agency in breaking rocks and subduing wild 
beasts; but in curing immorality, in which 
we strive to regulate the action and reaction 
of the faculties and passions of the human 
soul, force is about as well adapted to our 
purpose as a sledge-hammer to regulating 
a watch. Some people seem to have the 
impression that society is restrained from 
evil by law; that our wives and daughters 
are virtuous because there is a law against 
prostitution; that our exemplary citizens re- 
frain from profanity and excess in gaming 
and drinking because they are forbidden by 



172 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

law; that somehow society is kept in order 
by law. 

"It is not denied that Massachusetts has 
to-day upon her statute-books other laws in- 
volving the same violation of personal liberty 
as prohibition; but every law interfering with 
personal habits and propensities has no prac- 
tical vitality. 

" For example, prostitution is an enor- 
mous evil; and we have a severe statute 
against it; but, as a matter of fact, if a house 
of prostitution be conducted in a quiet, un- 
obtrusive way, the authorities cannot break 
it up. If any prohibitionist can devise a 
method by which the authorities can break 
up such a house, it would be easy to sell 
his discovery to property holders of New 
York City for a hundred million of dollars. 

"Scattered throughout this city (Boston) 
there are unnumbered rooms over stores, 
and other places of business, and in private 
houses, occupied by persons who are living 
in the relation of husband and wife without 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. I 73 

legal marriage. There are not two punish- 
ments for every hundred thousand violations 
of the statutes against such intimacies. 

" Gambling is very common in our city. 
There is a great number of rooms, or suites 
of rooms, devoted to this practice. In club 
houses and many hotels, gambling may be 
found every night, and often lasting all night. 
Not a fiftieth part of the gambling done in 
this city takes place in gambling rooms. 
Why does it never occur to anybody to 
attempt to enforce the law against gambling 
in our clubs and other private houses; should 
they attempt it they would signally fail." 

Although this was said of New England, 
it is representative of the United States and 
the civilized world. A like picture might be 
drawn of every city in our land and through- 
out Europe. Every candid and intelligent 
magistrate, or police official, in the country 
will admit that the law never has, and never 
can, prevent gaming, intemperance or prosti- 
tution. This has been publicly acknowledged 



174 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

by the most eminent men of affairs in Europe. 
That it is impossible to suppress or exter- 
minate the " social evil" has been demon- 
strated by Acton, Tait, Parent and Du Cha- 
telet. The latter avows that " licensed houses 
are the most judicious and the most consist- 
ent with good morals." The police establish- 
ments of the continent, finding it impossible 
to prevent the existence of houses of ill- 
fame, realized the necessity, not of authoriz- 
ing, but of licensing them. The vice is now 
subject to police supervision in Paris, Toulon, 
Lyons, Strasburg, Brest, Hamburg, Berlin, 
Vienna, Naples, Brussels, Rheims, Bor- 
deaux, Marseilles, Copenhagen, Madrid, 
Malta, Lisbon, Amsterdam and St. Peters- 
burg. A like policy obtains in Bombay, 
Hong Kong, Japan, New South Wales and 
Cape Colony. 

On the contrary, England wages war 
against prostitution. Is it with success? 
No; in this respect her cities are the worst 
in Europe. In that country 42,000 illegitimate 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 1 75 

children were born in 185 1. It was estimated 
that within the five years preceding, 212,000 
females had strayed from the paths of virtue, 
and thus taken the first step in prostitution. 
In 1832, London had a population of 1,000,000, 
and her known prostitutes numbered 10,000. 
Within her limits were then 3,300 brothels. 
At that time, in Liverpool, there were 5,000 
fallen women. Of houses of ill-fame Dublin 
had 355; Edinburgh, 219; Glasgow, 204; 
Liverpool, 770; Manchester, 308; Birming- 
ham, 797; Hull, 175; Leeds, 179; Norwich, 
194. In England, in 1865, there were 500,000 
prostitutes. It has been computed that the 
unfortunates number about 86,000 in the 
London of to-day. It is not surprising, then, 
that the constabulary of Great Britain are 
in despair of their power for good over this 
evil. " Sooner or later (they realize) the 
principle of individual liberty must triumph, 
and prostitution must become, under the 
shadow of general principles, as unrestricted 
as any other commerce, moral or immoral." 



176 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

In New York City, also, the law has 
always attempted to repress the " social 
evil," but without avail. This has been 
openly recognized by those in authority. 
In 1875, 1876, and 1877 licensed prostitution 
was recommended by a committee of the 
State Legislature, the Grand Jury of the 
City and County of New York, and the 
Commissioner of Public Charities and Cor- 
rection. The committee assumed " that 
houses of prostitution must exist;" and its 
members, therefore, took it upon themselves 
" to earnestly recommend to the Legislature 
the regulating, or permitting," or, as they 
phrased it, " if the word be not deemed 
offensive, the licensing of prostitution." In 
June, 1876, the Grand Jury of the Court of 
General Sessions of the same county and 
state, made an official presentment concern- 
ing prostitution, in which they say "that 
however abhorrent to the views of some, 
any legislation may be, which appears to 
legalize so great an evil, still the fact must 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 1 77 

not be lost sight of that it is an evil im- 
possible to suppress, yet comparatively easy 
to regulate and circumscribe." They con- 
clude with a memorial to the Legislature, 
" to adopt as early as practicable some system 
of laws calculated to confine houses of prosti- 
tution, in the large cities of this state, within 
certain specified limits, and to subject them 
at all times to a careful and vigilant super- 
vision of the Boards of Health and Police." 
Punitory laws never have, and never 
will cure the evils to which society is liable. 
" Life is sweet," some one has said, and yet 
even the death penalty does not prevent 
murder. If the menace of death is not a 
deterrent, what can be said for lesser pen- 
alties like fines and imprisonment. That 
capital punishment is not a preventive of 
crime was (upon investigation) the convic- 
tion of Bentham, Beccaria, George Clinton, 
Lord Brougham, Judge J. W. Edmunds, 
William H. Seward, Wendell Phillips, Douglas 
Jerrold, Cassius M. Clay, Dr. Lushington, 



I78 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

Edward Livingston, Theodore Parker, Vice- 
President Dallas, DeWitt Clinton, Victor 
Hugo, Mittermaier. John Howard, Sir Samuel 
Romilly, Earl Russell, Lord Houghton, Lord 
Osborne, John Bright, Lord Hobart, Lord 
Kelly, Frederick Robertson, Prof. Fawcett, 
Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Canning, 
Thomas Jefferson, and hundreds of other 
able, thoughtful and conscientious men. 
Their position was not only grounded on 
observation, but fortified by the experience 
of Tuscany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Ba- 
varia, Belgium, San Marino, Denmark, Nor- 
way, Sweden, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minne- 
sota, Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island. 
"There is no passion in the mind of man," 
said Lord Bacon, "so weak, but it mates and 
masters the fear of death; and therefore 
death is no such terrible enemy when a man 
hath so many attendants about him that can 
win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs 
over death; love slights it; honor aspireth 
to it; grief fleeth to it; fear occupieth it." 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. I 79 

And if "the fear of the great future," writes 
Bovee, " when painted, with the horrors such 
as only a Milton or a Pollok could depict, 
produces no more marked effect on human 
action; it is hardly reasonable to suppose 
that the menace of death by human law, 
will be very effective in the repression of 
crime." 

The truth is clear to Rev. Octavius B. 
Frothingham. He declares that neither 
crime nor vice can be prevented, remedied, 
or expelled by force of law. " Nature will 
have her way, if not by one channel, then 
by another. She will plunge underground, 
and come up in unexpected spots. Cunning 
comes to her assistance. She makes alliance 
with subterfuge and deceit. She is sly, swift, 
ubiquitous. Disappearing in New York, she 
turns up in Philadelphia. Expelled from 
the cities, she takes refuge in the towns; 
banished from the towns, she finds coverts 
in the cities; hiding in the dens and slums, 
creeping into the lanes, mingling with the 



l8o LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

crowd of harmless things, sheltering herself 
behind law. She is a Proteus, able to take 
on every possible shape of innocence. Re- 
fuse her brandy, she will take opium, mor- 
phine, ether, tobacco, strong coffee, in quan- 
tities equivalent to the stimulant desired. 
You fancy the community becoming tem- 
perate in one respect, and find it becoming 
intemperate in another. Opium eaters multi- 
ply as dram-drinkers decrease. The pro- 
pensity is alive still, and perhaps provoked 
to activity by the efforts made to suppress 
it. The natural appetite being reinforced by 
anger, spite, the spirit of resistance to perse- 
cution, which grows dogged and stubborn, 
fortifying the sense of injustice by the pride 
of self-will. 

"As if impatient at the slowness of the 
converting process, weary of the task of plant- 
ing vice out, of choking the weeds of instinct 
with the flowers of grace, the church under- 
took, with violent hand, to pull up the weeds 
by main force. Instead of abolishing the 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. l8l 

hydra by a beautiful law of evolution, which 
should create a series of nobler growths; it 
undertook to cut off the poisonous heads, 
one by one. It took boys and girls, at the 
tenderest age, out of the world, confined 
them in religious houses, refused them the 
joy of the flesh, and the joy of the eyes, and 
the pride of life, barred the gates of every 
terrestrial garden, mortified their desires, 
kept them occupied with prayers and con- 
templations, and so tried to starve nature to 
death. 

" Christianity, was as consistent, tried to 
repress the disposition to unbelief, in its 
opinion the most fruitful source of vice. 
The disposition to unbelief was regarded as 
the deadliest symptom of the natural, uncon- 
verted heart. To counteract it by an opposite 
disposition to belief was tedious and difficult, 
and the method of repression was resorted 
to. The civic power was enlisted in the 
work of exterminating pernicious error. 
Tribunals were created, laws were passed, 



182 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

judges and executioners were appointed, 
penalties were devised, heretical schools were 
broken up, heretical books were burned, 
heretical teachers were banished, silenced, 
incarcerated, consigned to the flames. Whole 
provinces were devastated, towns were des- 
troyed, populations turned adrift to perish; 
the entire field of unorthodox thought was 
ploughed over and sown with salt. And 
what was the result of the method, carried 
out on this vast scale, with full ecclesiastical 
and civil powers — the sacred and the secular 
authorities combining, the sympathy of the 
Christian world aiding, no public opinion 
opposing, the resources of wealth conspiring 
with the resources of fanaticism, to make 
the policy of suppression effective ? The 
issue is familiar to all who care to know the 
truth, from the reports of historians, who 
have made it their business to ascertain and 
tell the facts. They certainly do not bear 
out the conclusion that the method of sup- 
pression is wise, or even practical. On the 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 1 83 

contrary, they suggest the opinion that it 
is impractical as it is unwise. The failure 
of the method was so disastrous that it quite 
defeated the ends. 

" If one thing is demonstrated by human 
history, it is this: — the attempt to suppress 
human nature, under any form, so it be 
nature that is suppressed, is futile. The 
old proverbs, which say, ' Drive nature out 
at the door, and she comes in at the window;' 
'You cannot expel nature with a fork;' hold 
out a truth that is for all time. 
Deeply rooted propensities, habits which 
have become a second nature, cannot be 
thus dealt with. No Hercules' club will 
avail to kill the vital principle that grows 
venomous heads faster than they can be 
bruised. The effort to suppress nature by 
violent measures, is always followed, always 
produces a reaction, that is exactly propor- 
tioned in strength to the effort, and fairly bal- 
ances it. Healthy progress is slow, gradual, 
measured, according to the sure conditions 



184 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

of cause and effect. It consists of a long 
line of close sequences, knit together, not 
mechanically, like a chain, but organically, 
like a muscle or a nerve. Every inch of 
growth implies a preceding inch of growth; 
there is no such thing as jump or leap from 
point to point. You do not make the elastic 
band longer by stretching it; you but loosen 
the cohesion of its parts; the strain being 
relaxed, the band resumes its first condition; 
the strain being continued, the band looses 
its elasticity and breaks. There is no more 
power than there is." 

M. Guizot, statesman and historian, 
thought it a gross delusion to believe in 
the sovereign power of political machinery. 
Every day discloses a failure, every day 
there reappears the belief that it needs but 
an act of some legislative body and a corps 
of officials to effect any purpose. The faith 
of mankind is nowhere better seen. Dis- 
appointment has been preached from the 
first: "Put not thy trust in legislation. ,, Yet 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 185 

the trust in legislation seems scarcely dimin- 
ished. Is it not time to reject the law as 
a social panacea? We should now realize 
that measures are usually quite different in 
effect from what has been expected. It 
would be difficult to estimate the number 
of legislative disappointments in English and 
American history; " or the amount of harm 
which has been inflicted on society by abor- 
tive attempts at statesmanship." History 
demonstrates the incapacity of law-givers. 
Says Mr. Jensen, " From the statute of 
Merton (20 Henry III.) to the end of 1872, 
there had been passed 18,110 public acts, 
of which he estimated that four-fifths had 
been partially or wholly repealed." And 
Herbert Spencer estimated a few years ago 
that " in the last three sessions of the 
English parliament, there have been totally 
repealed 650 acts, belonging to the present 
reign alone." 

Buckle said, in this connection, every 
great reform has consisted " not in doing 



1 86 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

something new, but in undoing something 
old. The most valuable additions made to 
legislation have been enactments destruc- 
tive of preceding legislation, and the best 
laws which have been passed have been 
those by which some former laws were re- 
pealed. . . . We owe no thanks to law- 
givers as a class; for, since the most valu- 
able improvements in legislation are those 
which subvert preceding legislation, it is 
clear that the balance of good cannot be 
on their side. It is clear that the progress 
of civilization cannot be due to those who, 
on the most important subjects, have done 
so much harm that their successors are con- 
sidered benefactors, simply because they 
reverse their policy, and thus restored affairs 
to the state in which they would have re- 
mained, if politicians had allowed them to 
run on in the course which the wants of 
society required." 

In the name of " liberty and equality," a 
brave battle has been fought for individuality. 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 187 

Unjust and unwise interference by the state 
has been ably resisted. It is demanded that 
private judgment be released from the em- 
brace of authority. The truth is, one man 
has no natural right to make laws for an- 
other. True, he may repel another, when 
his own rights are infringed, but he has no 
right to govern him. The individual is 
sovereign merely over himself, and not over 
his fellow-man. 

The greatest minds now insist an indi- 
vidual will more freely act, not only for the 
furtherance of personal interests, but also 
for collective interests, without being con- 
strained thereto by an external power. 
Whenever room is to be made, they say, 
for the advance of society, public authority 
must retire within its narrowest jurisdiction; 
yielding, because of its impracticability, all 
control over concerns purely personal. " Who 
remembers having done anything, or having 
refrained from doing anything, on account 
of the statutes? If we could realize how 



1 88 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

little civil law contributes to the good con- 
duct and well-being of society, our interest 
in legislators would be greatly lessened. Of 
the millions upon millions of acts of kind- 
ness and justice which go to make up civil- 
ized life, I take it that nine in ten would 
not be performed at all, if they were required 
by law. 

John Stuart Mill has clearly defined the 
limit of individual "sovereignty" — as it is 
termed — and where the authority of society 
should begin. " Each will receive its proper 
share, if each has that which more particu- 
larly concerns it. To individuality should 
belong the part of life in which it is chiefly 
the individual that is interested; to society, 
the part which chiefly interests society. 

" The acts of an individual may be hurtful 
to others, or wanting in due consideration 
for their welfare, without going the length 
of violating their constituted rights. The 
offender may then be justly punished by 
opinion, though not by law. As soon as any 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 1 89 

part of a person's conduct affects prejudici- 
ally the interests of others, society has juris- 
diction over it, and the question whether 
the general welfare will or will not be pro- 
moted by interfering with it, becomes an 
open one. But there is no room for enter- 
taining any such question, when a person's 
conduct affects the interest of no person 
besides himself, or need not affect them un- 
less they like, all the persons concerned 
being of full age, and with the ordinary 
amount of understanding. In all such cases 
there should be perfect freedom, legal and 
social, to do the action and stand the con- 
sequences." 

Everybody agrees with this proposition, in 
the abstract. At this period of time, nobody 
would dispute "personal liberty," as a " glit- 
tering generality." People are too smart 
for that. It would be impolite and unfashion- 
able. They would agree with you, perhaps, 
that " personal liberty" is the source of all 
progress, the lever of all conquests, the in- 



IQO LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

spiration of all achievements. " The great, 
vital, pivotal fact of human life; all progress 
and all happiness begin and end in personal 
freedom." O yes, they will readily agree 
with the rhetoric involved. "The prize, the 
precious jewel of the ages, is personal liberty. 
It has no equivalents. Untold wealth, a 
mine of diamonds, a palace, are baubles by 
the side of personal liberty. We recognize 
the supreme importance of this principle. 
We are willing that all men should be free — 
if they will only do what is best for them. 
We rejoice in the utmost liberty of opinion 
and action — if people will only do and say 
what is right." 

Thus is " freedom " trespassed upon, under 
pretence that is for the good of the man 
or men whose rights are violated. Such 
was probably the pretext for every tyrannical 
invasion of popular rights known to history. 
Thus was it quaintly put by Dio Lewis: 
11 The Inquisition believed in the perfect 
liberty of all men to be Catholics, but if 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 3QI 

they caught a man with other notions about 
salvation, they put a thumb-screw on him. 
Our Puritan fathers believed in personal 
freedom as no other men ever did. They left 
their homes, crossed a stormy ocean, and 
braved a thousand dangers, that they might 
be free to think and say what they pleased. 
And they were perfectly willing that all who 
came along might think and say what they 
pleased, unless, as sometimes unfortunately 
happened, the other men said and thought 
things which conflicted with the things which 
the fathers thought and said. They some- 
times came across a Quaker, whose views did 
not seem quite the thing, and they hung him. 
Our New England fathers believed in ' religi- 
ous liberty.' Indeed, 'religious liberty' was 
their constant boast; but if a man did not 
believe in hell, they would not let him testify 
in court. . . . But our fathers were 
always very kind about it; they said he was 
at liberty, perfect liberty, at any time to believe 
in hell, and then he might swear a blue streak.'' 



IQ2 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

What is really meant by this definition 
of " personal liberty" is the absolute right 
of every individual that every other individual 
shall act, in every respect, exactly as he 
ought; " that whosoever fails thereof, in the 
smallest particular, violates my social right 
and entitles me to demand of the legislature 
the removal of the grievance." "This doc- 
trine," continued Mill, " ascribes to all man- 
kind a vested interest in each others moral, 
intellectual, and physical perfection, to be 
defined by each claimant, according to his 
own standard." 

Of this class of men Dr. Lewis well said: 
"They consider themselves born to control 
other men. They are ever inquiring, ' What 
ought this man to do?' and if that man 
refuses to do it, 'How can we compel him?' 
They proceed thus: ' Resolved, That the 
righteous should govern the world. Re- 
solved, That we are the righteous.' ' 

In what language can I fitly designate 
a principle of action so impertinent and 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. IQ3 

presumptious? Who can deny the moral 
" liberty" of his fellow creature, as an abstract 
proposition? Is not the moral equality, or 
independence of man one of his essential 
rights? Neither one, nor any number of 
persons, is warranted in saying to another 
of mature years, what the latter shall, or 
shall not do with his life for his own benefit. 
"He is most deeply interested in his own 
well-being; the interest which another person 
can have in it is trifling, compared with that 
which he himself has." It is time for society 
to distinguish, sharply, between the province 
of morality and that of legislation. With 
the same end in view, perhaps, yet they 
should differ widely in extent. Admit that 
morals and the law have the same center, 
they have not the same circumference. 
There may be a moral guide to the conduct 
of an individual, through all the details of 
life, through all the relationships of society; 
but legislation cannot be this, and if it 
could, it ought not to exercise a continued 



194 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

and direct interference with the conduct of 
men. There are many acts useful to the 
community which the legislator ought never 
to command; so are there many hurtful 
acts, which he ought not to forbid. There is 
certainly a broad distinction between moral 
and legal rights. For instance, "a man has 
no moral right to hate his wife, but he has 
a perfect legal right to hate her. A man 
has no moral right to foreclose a mortgage 
on a sick widow's home, and turn her and 
her children out in the snow, but he has a 
perfect legal right to do it. A man has no 
moral right to make a glutton of himself, 
destroy his usefulness, and thus throw his 
wife and children on the town, but he has 
a perfect legal right to do it." A man has 
no moral right to drink rum, but he has a 
perfect legal right to do so. What actions, 
then, may be legally punished as offenses? 
" What a question," I hear some one exclaim; 
" are not all men agreed upon it? Do you 
ask us to prove an acknowledged truth," 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 195 

I answer in words of the great Jeremy Bent- 
ham: " Be it so. But on what is founded 
that agreement? Demand of each his 
reasons. You will find a strange diversity 
of interest and principles. You will find it 
not only among the people, but among phil- 
osophers. . . . The agreement which you 
see is founded only on prejudices; and these 
prejudices vary, according to the times and 
places, according to opinions and customs. 
. . . People have always said that such 
an action is an offense. Such is the guide 
of the multitude, and even of the legislator. 
But if usage has made innocent actions 
crimes ; if it makes venial offenses appear 
heavy, and heavy offences light; if it has 
varied everywhere, it is clear that we must 
subject it to some rule. 

Vices are not rightly punishable by law. 
They are amenable to education only. Should 
A. assist B. to indulge in a vice, and A. uses 
no fraud or coercion, and B. is compos mentis, 
A. is not guilty of a crime, in the proper 



iq6 legislative exorcism. 

sense. Suppose A. were a cook, who com- 
pounds for B. rich and delicious dishes, and 
of which B. partakes to such an extent that 
he sickens and dies, A. is not guilty of a 
crime. Neither is B.'s indulgence in the 
strong food or strong drink a crime punish- 
able by law, only a vice amenable to dis- 
cretion and judgment. 

Correctly considered, then, a crime is an 
act which one man, with " malice prepense," 
commits upon the person or property of 
another, without that other's consent. Crime 
may be subject to law. A vice, on the other 
hand, is any act or passion in which a person 
may indulge himself: malice, hypocrisy, pride, 
envy, hatred, avarice, ambition, profanity, 
falsehood, indolence, cowardice, drunkenness, 
gluttony, tyranny, fanaticism, extravagance, 
etc., etc. Unless this distinction be recognized 
by the law, there can be no such thing as indi- 
vidual right, liberty or property, " no such 
thing as the right of one man to the control of 
his own person and property, and the corres- 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. IQ7 

ponding and co-equal right of another man to 
the control of his own person and property." 

An eminent and respected physician once 
said to an enlightened audience: " Not a per- 
son before me, but has suffered from vices; in- 
deed, that is what we mean by the imperfec- 
tion of human nature. When we depart from 
perfection it is a vice. Everybody is guilty of 
vices. The people before me, forty years old, 
should not be so old at fifty or sixty. Their 
teeth are decayed, and they have imperfect 
digestion. They do not enjoy the full and 
happy play of all their powers and faculties, 
and the greater part of this waste comes 
from vices. There are certain secret vices 
which cannot be publicly named, which are 
doing more to break down our vital force, 
make us prematurely old, and fetter our 
souls, than all the crimes committed in the 
country, and the legislature can do nothing 
to cure them. 

" Without doubt, gluttony is the most 
destructive of all our vices. It obtains 



I98 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

among all classes, all ages, and both sexes. 
Eminent medical men, in England and 
America, declare that strong food can count 
ten victims, where strong drink counts one. 

" Tobacco is doing more injury to the 
minds and bodies of our nation than all 
the murder, theft, burglary, and arson, and 
yet the legislature can do nothing to cure 
the tobacco curse." 

Dr. Lewis wisely continues: "It is not 
often possible to say of those acts that are 
called vices, that they are really vices ex- 
cept in degree. That is, it is difficult to 
say of any actions, or courses of action, 
that are called vices, that they really would 
have been vices, if they had stopped short 
of a certain point. The question of vice 
or virtue, therefore, in all such cases, is a 
question of quantity and degree, and not 
of the intrinsic character of any single act, 
by itself. This fact adds to the difficulty, 
not to say the impossibility, of any one's 
— except each individual for himself — draw- 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 199 

ing any accurate line, or anything like an 
accurate line, between virtue and vice; that 
is, of telling where virtue ends and vice 
begins. And this is another reason why 
this whole question of virtue and vice should 
be left for each person to settle for him- 
self. Vices are usually pleasurable, at least 
for the time being, and often do not dis- 
close themselves as vices, by their effects, 
until they have been practiced for many 
years, or perhaps for a life-time. To 
many, perhaps most, of those who practice 
them, they do not disclose themselves as 
vices, at all during life. Virtues, on the 
other hand, often appear so harsh and 
rugged, they require the sacrifice of so 
much present happiness, at least, and the 
results which alone prove them to be vir- 
tues, are so often distant and obscure, in 
fact so absolutely invisible to the minds of 
many, especially of the young, that, from 
the very nature of things, there can be no 
universal or even general knowledge that 



200 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

they are virtues. In truth, the studies of 
profound philosophers have been expended 
— if not wholly in vain, certainly with very 
small results — in efforts to draw the lines 
between virtues and vices. 

" If then, it be so difficult, so nearly im- 
possible, in most cases, to determine what 
is and what is not, vice; and especially if 
it be so difficult in nearly all cases to de- 
termine where virtue ends and where vice 
begins; and if these questions, which no one 
can really and truly determine for anybody 
but himself, are not to be left open and 
free for experiment by all, each person 
is deprived of the highest of all his rights 
as a human being; to wit: his right to inquire, 
investigate, reason, try experiments, judge 
and ascertain for himself, what is, to him, 
virtue, and what is, to him, vice; in other 
words, what, on the whole, conduces to his 
happiness, and what, on the whole, tends to 
his unhappiness. If this great right is not to 
be left free and open to all, then each man's 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 201 

whole right as a reasoning human being, 
to liberty and the pursuit of happiness is 
denied him." " It is now obvious, for the 
reasons already given, that government 
would be utterly impracticable, if it were to 
take cognizance of vices and punish them 
as crimes. Every human being has his, or 
her, vices. Nearly all men have a great 
many. And they are of all kinds: physio- 
logical, mental, emotional, religious, social, 
commercial, industrial, economical, etc. If 
government is to take cognizance of any of 
these vices, and punish them as crimes, then, 
to be consistent, it must take cognizance of 
all and punish all impartially. The con- 
sequences would be, that everybody would 
be in prison for his, or her, vices. There 
would be no one left to lock the doors upon 
those within. In fact, courts enough could 
not be found to try the offenders, nor prisons 
enough built to hold them. All human in- 
dustry in the acquisition of knowledge, and 
even in acquiring the means of subsistence, 



202 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

would be arrested; we should be all under 
constant trial or imprisonment for our vices. 
But even if it were possible to imprison all 
the vicious, our knowledge of human nature 
tells us that, as a general rule, they would 
be far more vicious in prison than they ever 
have been out of it. A government that 
shall punish all vices impartially, is so obvi- 
ously an impossibility, that nobody was ever 
found, or ever will be found, foolish enough 
to propose it. The most that any one pro- 
poses is, that government shall punish some 
one, or, at most a few, of what he esteems 
the grossest of them." 

" But this discrimination is an utterly 
absurd, illogical and tyrannical one. What 
right has any body of men to say, ' The 
vices of other men we will punish, but our 
own vices nobody shall punish? We will 
restrain other men from seeking their own 
happiness, according to their own notions 
of it; but nobody shall restrain us from 
seeking our own happiness, according to our 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 203 

notion of it. We will restrain other men 
from acquiring any experimental knowledge 
of what is conducive or necessary to their 
own happiness; but nobody shall restrain 
us from acquiring an experimental knowl- 
edge of what is conducive or necessary to 
our own happiness." Nobody but knaves 
and blockheads ever think of any such 
absurd assumptions as these. And yet, 
evidently, it is only upon such assumptions 
that anybody can claim the right to pun- 
ish the vices of others, and at the same 
time claim exemption from punishment for 
his own. The greatest of all crimes are 
the wars that are carried on by govern- 
ments to plunder, destroy and enslave man- 
kind." 

It has been asserted that gambling is 
a vice. I deny that such is the case. 
The proposition cannot be established, as 
an absolute principle. If a man chooses to 
risk his money, on a game of cards, he 
has a perfect right to do so, in the ab- 



204 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

stract, and no man, or any body of men, 
has a right to forbid him. " It is his money, 
and he has a right to do what he chooses 
with it. He has a legal right to put it in 
a gun and shoot it away, or burn it up, or 
risk it on a game of chance, or make any 
other disposition of it, and no man, or body, 
of men, has a right to interfere." For my 
purpose, as a question of law, the real ques- 
tion is whether a man may dispose of his 
own as he chooses? If so, then he has a 
right to wager it on a game of cards, or 
at dice; and it is absurd to treat as criminal 
another man who may join in with him in 
gaming, as an antagonist. In other words, 
" If John has at any time or in any place, 
the right to wager his money on a game 
of chance, then it is absurd to treat as 
criminal the helping John to do what he 
has a right to do. If one participant in a 
transaction is guilty of crime, so is the other. 
But if one participant is guiltless, then the 
other is guiltless." 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 205 

The keepers of gambling resorts are de- 
nounced, as though they were responsible 
for the gambling propensity in mankind. 
Now, resorts for gambling do not cause the 
passion. It is a tendency to which all men 
are prone, more or less. "The essential 
fact is the existence of this passion. There 
can never be any great difficulty in obtain- 
ing the means for its gratification." If not 
one way, then in another. If at all, at- 
tack the principle, in whatever guise or by 
whomsoever practiced. If some methods 
are denounced, then should all methods be 
denounced. If those who furnish certain 
" means to the end " are to be punished as 
criminals, then should all persons who fur- 
nish any "means to the end." But to 
punish any such person is erroneous and 
very short sighted; for the primary cause 
of the trouble, if such it be, is the desire 
for gaming. It is impossible to prevent 
its gratification. As wisely attempt " to 
make one's hair white or black " by virtue 



T06 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

of " the statute in such cases made and 
provided. " 

Suppose the law efficacious, with what 
consistency does our jurisprudence make 
gambling a crime? In general, at common 
law, all games are lawful, unless fraud has 
been practiced. Each of the parties must 
have a right to the money or thing played 
for. He must give his free and full con- 
sent, and the play must be conducted 
fairly. The mutual promises of the parties 
to the wager are held «*^ sufficient con- 
sideration. A large number of such actions 
have been sustained by the courts of Eng- 
land and the United States. 

For example, it was held that a wager 
of fifty guineas by one of the litigants that 
an appeal from a decree of Chancery 
would be reversed by the House of Lords, 
was not, of itself, void, there being no 
charge of fraud. So, wagers as to the 
time when a railroad would be completed; 
or, as to the name of a person whom one 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 207 

of the parties had seen; or, as to the age 
of one of the parties; or, upon the price 
of an article of commerce; or, as to who 
would die first, of two persons not privy 
to the wager; or, as to whether A. would 
hit a target; or, upon foot or horse races; 
were held valid. Indeed, the tendency of 
the courts to discourage wagers of every 
nature is relatively of recent date. In 
many of the United States, the doctrine 
has been abrogated by statute. Texas, 
Delaware, California, and some other states 
still adhere to the English rule. 

Some of the judgment? in England were 
rendered by the greatest of judicial minds: 
Lord Mansfield, Lord Holt, Lord Hard- 
wicke and Lord Kenyon. In the language 
of Lord Holt: " When considered in itself, 
there is nothing in a wager, contrary to 
natural equity, and the contract will be con- 
sidered as a reciprocal gift, which the parties 
make of the thing played for, under certain 
conditions." Lord Mansfield laid it down, 



208 LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

that wagers are actionable: " and that the 
restraints imposed on certain species, by 
acts of parliament, are exceptions to the 
general rule, and prove it." And Lord 
Kenyon declared in Good vs. Elliott: " Be- 
ing bound by former decisions, not having 
the power to alter the law, not finding 
any one case against the legality of wagers 
in general, and finding cases without num- 
ber, wherein wagers have been held to be 
good, and that the payment of them may 
be enforced, I adjudge the wager in the 
present case good at common law." It 
was a wager that A. had purchased a cer- 
tain wagon of B. 

The source of our jurisprudence is the 
common law of England. Gambling was 
not a crime under this system, and here it 
would enforce the contract of wager. I 
therefore denounce as incongruous and irra- 
tional a statute which seeks to punish the 
wagerer as a criminal. 

Crime, at common law is something 



LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 20Q 

essential, so, in its very nature; grounded 
in the Mosaic decalogue and the reason 
of things: murder, mayhem, adultery, rob- 
bery, theft, arson. The wager is akin to 
none of these, nor does it come within 
their spirit. The common law branded as 
a criminal him only whom God had thus 
branded. The wagerer was not of the 
number. 

In a word, is gambling malum in se? In 
answer, the common conviction of men has 
never so regarded it. The common law 
has ever recognized a boundary line which 
separates the mala in se from the mala 
prohibita. In law, a thing is malum in se 
when absolutely evil in itself; "not, indeed, 
in a philosophical sense, ' says the eminent 
lawyer, James C. Carter, "but absolutely, 
according to the universal conviction, in 
the political society which so views it; and 
mala prohibita are those things, otherwise 
innocent or indifferent, which the legislative 
power, having control over the subject, may 



2IO LEGISLATIVE EXORCISM. 

declare to be offenses/' Although not malum 
in se, gambling may be malum prohibitum. 
If the latter, then it becomes merely a 
question of public policy whether or not 
the state shall license gambling, subject to 
such conditions as the police power might 
impose. At any rate, to the extent that 
government is a moral entity, it cannot 
rightfully punish gambling as being bad 
in itself. 



"Zhe Iking is 2>eab— %ong 
%ive tbe Iking." 



(211) 



CHAPTER V. 
"Ube Iking is 2>ea£>— %ong %ix>e tbe Iking/' 

EXPRESSIVE was the coronation cere- 
mony in the ancient Dukedom of 
Carinthia. The ducal candidate, in a peas- 
ant's garb, and with head proudly erect, 
walked towards the marble throne of his 
ancestors. But upon it was already seated 
a peasant, attended by the black bull and 
the lean horse — those sad and severe sym- 
bols of his class. Then was commenced 
between them this rude dialogue: 

Peasant: — "Who so proudly dares enter 
here? Is he a just judge? Has he the 
good of the country at heart ?" 

Duke:— " He is and he will." 

(213) 



214 THE KING IS DEAD. 

Peasant: — "I demand by what right he 
will force me to quit this place?" 

Duke: — " He will buy it of you for sixty 
pennies, and the horse and the bull shall 
be yours." 

Nowhere, in the past, was the sovereignty 
of the people more haughtily declared, than 
in this formality of the old Carinthians. 
" It bears the seal of remote antiquity — of 
an Homeric or Biblical simplicity." That 
the people were the only true source of 
power, was admitted even in the archaic 
periods of history. Of olden time, there 
were many forms of popular government. 
Aristotle made a study of their institutions. 
Greece had her democracies and Italy a 
great republic. In Asia, then, as now, the 
assertion of political power was the sole 
foundation for its maintenance. 

With the development of Christianity, 
in Europe, was inculcated the theoretic idea. 
Kings were anointed and they ruled by 
" divine right." In the language of Mr. 



THE KING IS DEAD. 21 5 

Tiedeman: "The king, who in theory ob- 
tained his authority from God, acknowledged 
no natural rights in the individual. Indi- 
vidual activity, for its room, depended upon 
the monarch's will." In time, however, came 
the Reformation and political revolutions in 
England, France, the Netherlands, Spain 
and Italy. To-day, the " divine right " of 
kings is generally repudiated. It has been 
displaced by the ancient principle that all 
power is derived from the people. " The 
people were once subjects of the king. The 
government is now subject to the people. ,, 
"The king is dead," but his functions yet 
live in " the state," or the people. 

While many ancient statesmen and publi- 
cists recognized the proper origin of power 
in government, their opinions as to its nature 
and extent were neither clear nor sound. 
Wherever lodged, in their judgment, power 
was limitless and irresponsible. Whether 
exercised by king or emperor, by an aris- 
tocracy or the people, it was absolute. 



2l6 THE KING IS DEAD. 

Politically, in other words, the individual was 
annihilated by the state. Government did 
not permit the existence of any personal 
right that it "was bound to respect." This 
is also true of later times, in continental 
Europe. True, the " divine right " of kings 
was repudiated, but not the doctrine of ab- 
solutism. " Vox Popidi, Vox Dei" became 
the general answer to all complaints of the 
individual against the encroachments of 
popular government upon his rights and 
liberty." In the name of the people, atrocious 
crimes w r ere perpetrated by revolutionary 
governments. 

In its proper sense, individual liberty is 
a development of the Anglo-Saxon institu- 
tions. This doctrine is fundamental to the 
English Constitution. The principle is car- 
dinal and vital in the American system of 
government. Individual rights are protected 
by constitutional restrictions upon power, 
federal and state. In the United States, 
every individual is a king. This accords 



THE KING IS DEAD. 217 

with the so-called laissez-faire doctrine, of 
modern development in England and the 
United States, which confines the sphere of 
government within the narrowest limits, and 
denies to it the power to do more than 
provide for public order and personal se- 
curity, by the prevention and punishment 
of crimes and trespasses. Under the influ- 
ence of this wholesome principle, with us 
and in Great Britain, for one hundred years, 
the encroachments of government upon the 
rights and liberties of the individual have 
been comparatively few. 

In other words, it has been generally ad- 
mitted by the wisest and broadest states- 
manship, that private rights and personal 
liberty do not exist by the permission of 
municipal law. They are natural and founded 
upon the law of reason ; that, therefore, 
governmental restraint should " only go to 
the limit necessary to a uniform and reason- 
able conservation of private rights." Muni- 
cipal law protects and develops, rather 



2l8 THE KING IS DEAD. 

than creates private rights and personal 
liberty. 

In the United States this "'limit" has 
been generally fixed at the power to enforce 
the common and civil law maxim, "sic utere 
tuo y ut alieum non IcedasT The " police 
power," it is called, and extends, in its 
broadest sense, to the preservation of peace 
and good order to the protection of property 
rights, " and of the lives, limbs, health and 
comfort of all persons." Any law which 
goes beyond this, in the United States, at 
least, and undertakes to abolish rights, the 
exercise of which do not infringe upon the 
rights of others; or limits the exercise of 
rights beyond what is necessary for the 
public welfare and general security, is not 
properly within the police power. 

The police power, then, is properly con- 
cerned only with crimes and trespasses. It 
cannot rightfully invade the realm of ethics, 
as such. Crime is theoretically a direct in- 
jury to the public, and trespass, a direct in- 



THE KING IS DEAD. 2IQ 

jury to the individual. A vice, on the con- 
trary, is the inordinate gratification of one's 
desires and passions. The primary damage 
is to one's self. In contemplating the na- 
ture of a vice, we are not conscious of a 
trespass on the rights of others. Vice does 
not fall within the police power. Expressed 
in the language of Mr. Tiedeman, "the 
object of police power, is the prevention 
of crime — the protection of rights against 
the assaults of others. The police power 
of the government cannot properly be 
brought into operation for the purpose of 
exacting obedience to the rules of morality, 
and banishing vice and sin from the world. 
The moral laws can exact obedience only 
in foro conscientice. The municipal law has 
only to do with trespasses. It cannot be 
called into play in order to save one from 
the evil consequences of his own vices, for 
the violation of a right, by the action of 
another, must exist or be threatened, in 
order to justify the interference of law." 



220 THE KING IS DEAD. 

The people of this country are generally 
convinced of this truth. So widespread is 
the conviction that, where a law " does not 
have for its object the prevention or pun- 
ishment of a trespass upon rights, it is 
impossible to obtain for it an enthusiastic 
and unanimous support/' Besides, it is true 
of every community, when " public opinion 
is aroused to an activity that will enforce 
a law for the prevention of vice, the moral 
force alone will be ample to suppress it." 
But it is sometimes urged that an other- 
wise ineffectual statute may serve to direct 
public opinion in the right direction. To 
this I reply that one unerring truth is taught 
by the history of legislation: "It is the 
utter futility, in a corrective sense, of a law 
whose enactment is not the unavoidable re- 
sultant of the forces then in play in organ- 
ized society. Nothing so weakens the rever- 
ence for law, and diminishes its effective- 
ness, as still-born statutes." 

Certain matters are generally recognized 



THE KING IS DEAD, 221 

to be within the police power of the state. 
For instance, the control of infectious and 
contagious diseases, of the insane, of habi- 
tual drunkards, spendthrifts, vagrants and 
mendicants. And finally, by forced con- 
struction, it has been extended to the 
liquor traffic. The law, it is said, may pro- 
hibit the sale of liquor to minors, lunatics, 
persons intoxicated, confirmed inebriates, 
and other persons with certain weaknesses 
of character. Courts maintain that while 
the liquor traffic is subject to the police 
power, yet it may not be entirely forbidden 
as necessarily injurious to the public in a 
legal sense. To quote the Supreme Court 
of Indiana, in Beabe vs. State: "Where 
injury does result (from the use of bever- 
ages) it is usually caused by the shortcom- 
ings of the purchaser, without any partici- 
pation in the wrong of the seller. No 
business can be prohibited altogether, un- 
less its prosecution is necessarily and essen- 
tially injurious. It is the abuse and not 



222 THE KING IS DEAD. 

the use of beverages that is hurtful. The 
use of beverages is not necessarily destruc- 
tive to the community. . . . Fire-arms 
and gunpowder are not manufactured to 
shoot innocent persons, but are often so 
misapplied. Axes and hatchets are not 
made and sold to break heads with, but 
are often used for that purpose. Yet who 
has ever contended the manufacture and 
sale of these articles should be prohibited 
as a nuisance. We repeat, the manufacture 
and sale of liquors are not necessarily hurt- 
ful, and therefore may not be entirely pro- 
hibited." 

So much for the " police power," gener- 
ally considered. But what of its relation to 
gambling, if any? If the practice is neither 
a crime nor a trespass, then it is not rightfully 
subject to public regulation. I have demon- 
strated to the candid judgment that, of itself, 
gambling is not essentially wrong. I insist 
that, at least, in the absence of fraud and 
chicane, it is neither sinful, nor criminal. 



THE KING IS DEAD. 223 

To gamble with another is not to assault 
his person or property by main force. To 
wager or bet upon the laws of chance, deceit 
aside, is not to kill, maim, rob, or cheat 
your fellow man; the players freely partici- 
pate in the hope of gain or for amusement. 
Then wherein is the action either felonious 
or tortious? Why should the police power 
interfere? That it cannot properly do so, 
under our institutions, is conceded by Mr. 
Tiedeman. He is an able and accomplished 
lawyer, and recognized by the profession as 
an authority on the subject. But it may be 
said, the effects are injurious, and for that 
reason the state may forbid the practice. 
That gambling is " necessarily and essenti- 
ally'' injurious to society, I deny. As a 
pastime, it is innocent, as a principle of 
action it permeates the business world. If 
an amusement, it may be abused to the detri- 
ment of certain individuals, but the abuse 
of a thing, innocent in itself, does not make 
that thing a crime. When an occupation, 



224 THE KING IS DEAD. 

it is but natural that the laws of chance 
should operate unevenly: to the advantage 
of some and to the disadvantage of others. 
Uniformity of success in affairs is impossible. 
Throughout the business world, in every 
department of human activity, the losers 
but bear a fixed proportion to the winners. 
Some must fail that others may succeed. 
Such is the law of existence, as society is 
constituted to-day. We are not now con- 
cerned with ideals. The realities suffice for 
my purpose. Chance is at present the great 
motive power of the world. It sustains hope, 
and stimulates endeavor. Through its oper- 
ation men are enriched and nations aggran- 
dized. That some meet with disaster and 
encounter misfortune does not prove that 
appeals to chance are criminal in their 
nature, nor that such appeals are " neces- 
sarily and essentially" injurious to the state 
Consistently, therefore, gambling cannot be 
forbidden because in its pursuit some persons 
are fool-hardy and others unfortunate. 



THE KING IS DEAD. 225 

I may be asked, " What do you sug- 
gest?" I would license gambling, and place 
it under such restrictions as would tend to 
lessen its abuse. I am willing, for practical 
purposes, to concede this much to the police 
power. If this policy may be claimed for 
the liquor traffic, why not for gambling 
also? Is gambling more injurious than in- 
temperance? No, the victims of alcohol 
outnumber the unfortunate gamblers a thou- 
sand to one. The habitual use of intoxi- 
cants is necessarily and uniformly injurious 
to the individual. This is not true of 
gambling, as a pastime. The player may 
win. Some of the players must win. What- 
ever can be said against the prohibition of 
the liquor traffic, applies with greater force 
to gambling. If there are reasons why 
the sale of intoxicants may be licensed, by 
the state and municipal authorities, such 
reasons serve but to demand a like privilege 
for gambling. Briefly, the rule laid down 
by the Indiana Supreme Court as to the 



226 THE KING IS DEAD. 

liquor traffic, in Beabe vs. State, is clearly 
applicable to games of chance as a business. 
This is obvious from the whole tenor of 
my discussion. If the state is not willing 
to take this step, then leave the matter to 
"local option." Leave it to the municipal 
authorities, whether gambling is to be per- 
mitted or not, in a given locality. Let it 
be a question of policy and toleration, if 
you will. Regulations may be imposed, as 
with the saloon. Recognize the existence 
of gambling as a fixed fact, but interpose 
a surveillance for the prevention of fraud. 
As with the saloon, also, provide for the 
protection of those weaklings who are ever 
wards of the law: " minors, drunkards, lu- 
natics and spendthrifts." This policy now 
obtains generally on the continent of Europe, 
and to a certain extent in several of the 
United States: notably, Arkansas, Texas 
and California. 

"What! would you have gambling public?" 
Yes, rather than private; and that is the 



THE KING IS DEAD. 227 

alternative presented to the wise. The ex- 
perience of California, in this matter, is that 
of every state in the Union, and all may 
profit by her example. In the words of 
Judge Murray of that state: " The Legisla- 
ture, finding a thirst for play universally 
prevalent throughout the state, and despair- 
ing of suppressing it entirely, attempted to 
control it in certain bounds, by imposing 
restrictions and burdens on this kind of 
business. The license operated as a permis- 
sion, and removed, or did away with the 
misdemeanor as it existed." The issue for 
practical men is: Shall gambling be in sight 
and subject to control, or shall it be out of 
sight and beyond control. The " situs" of 
public gambling is known to the authorities, 
and thus may its conduct be supervised and 
regulated: its every operation may be hourly 
inspected by the police, to the exclusion of 
those whom the law may with propriety 
protect from their own acts, and the preven- 
tion of cheating by dishonorable methods 



228 THE KING IS DEAD. 

and devices. If gambling is public, in brief, 
its abuses can be reduced to a minimum. 
When repressed at known points, gambling 
is not thereby discontinued. It is thus dis- 
tributed over a wider field, there, secretly 
to thrive in its worst features. Then it is 
that fraud and theft are triumphant: that 
"brace" gamblers "wax fat" and their 
conscienceless harpies pray in secret upon 
the unwary and the inexperienced. Public 
gambling is generally fair and honest. Secret 
gambling is too often but another name 
for a robbery that cannot be ' prevented 
by either police or magistrates. Again, 
the number of employees are few, com- 
paratively, in the public gambling club, 
and it is without other allurements than 
naked chance may offer. Not so the pri- 
vate institution, the patrons of which may 
freely partake of most seductive viands 
and expensive liquors ; rents are also 
higher, and more employees are required. 
The private club is costly in the extreme: 



THE KING IS DEAD. 229 

an extravagant scale is necessary to its 
very existence. This is a severe test to 
the scruples of a proprietor. In some 
way he must meet expenses and insure a 
livelihood. For an honest gambler the 
maintenance of a private club is seldom 
possible. 

" But public gambling would be a temp- 
tation to the poor man. You admit that 
poor men should not gamble?" I answer, 
who is the "poor" man? When you have 
found him, who is his keeper? Are you 
the custodian of his judgment and in- 
clinations ? I am of opinion he would 
repudiate your guardianship with indig- 
nation. "Consistency thou art," indeed, 
"a jewel." The rich and well-to-do may 
gamble, perhaps, but not the man of 
small resources. I ask, who has the 
right, for that reason, to say the latter nay? 
Not you, rich gambler in stocks and farm 
products; nor you, sir, who nightly gamble 
in the parlor of a comfortable home, 



23O THE KING IS DEAD. 

or at the private club you assist in maintain- 
ing for that purpose. By what authority 
were you constituted the keeper of a less 
fortunate neighbor? All this aside, how- 
ever, the suppression of public gambling 
will not deter any man from the pursuit, 
whether "rich" 'or "poor." A thousand 
avenues are opened to him, despite the 
law and the authorities. In this matter, 
society must trust to the education of in- 
dividual character and the gradual amelior- 
ation of mankind. Besides, if gambling 
were subject to regulation, as other pursuits, 
our laws could the better protect whomso- 
ever it might desire. 













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